Excerpts from the

1. The Beginning of the Church.
Acts of the Apostles. Community in Jerusalem — The First Church. Early Church Organization.
Life of Christians. Break with Judaism. The Apostle Paul. The Church and the Greco-Roman
World. People of the Early Church. Basis of Persecution by Rome. Blood of Martyrs. Struggle of
Christianity to Keep its Own Meaning. The New Testament. Sin and Repentance in the Church.
Beginnings of Theology. The Last Great Persecutions.

2. The Triumph Of Christianity.
Conversion of Constantine. Relations between Church and State. The Arian Disturbance.
Council of Nicaea — First Ecumenical Council. After Constantine. The Roman Position.
Countermeasures in the East. End of Arianism. New Relation of Christianity to the World. The
Visible Church. Rise of Monasticism. State Religion — Second Ecumenical Council. St. John
Chrysostom.

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils.
Development of Church Regional Structure. The Byzantine Idea of Church and State
Constantinople vs. Alexandria The Christological Controversy — Nestorius and Cyril. Third
Ecumenical Council. The Monophysite Heresy. Council of Chalcedon (Fourth Ecumenical
Council). Reaction to Chalcedon — the Road to Division. Last Dream of Rome. Justinian and
the Church. Two Communities. Symphony. Reconciliation with Rome — Break with the East.
Recurrence of Origenism. Fifth Ecumenical Council. Underlying Gains. Breakup of the Empire

2
— Rise of Islam. Decay of the Universal Church Last Efforts: Monothelitism. Sixth Ecumenical
Council. Changing Church Structure. Byzantine Theology. Quality of Life in the New Age.
Development of the Liturgy. Veneration of the Virgin Mary. Reflection of Theology and
Asceticism in the Services.

4. Byzantium.
Significance of the Byzantine Period. Background of Iconoclasm. Icons in the Seventh Century.
Iconoclastic Movement. Seventh Ecumenical Council. Persecution by the Iconoclasts. Church
and State in the Eighth Century — The Issue of Monasticism. Victory for the Monastic Principle.
Late Byzantine Theocracy — The Church‟s Version. Outward Signs. Inherent Weaknesses. The
Conservative Trend. Official Theology. A Vital Liturgy. New Hellenization. Monastic Theology.
Mt. Athos. The Mystical Root of Theology. Basic Church Unity. Elements of Misunderstanding
with Rome. Deepening Divergence. Loss of Communication. Schism of 1054. Alienation
Completed. Cyril and Methodius. Rise of the Bulgarian Empire. Bulgarian Orthodoxy. The
Serbian Empire. Early Slavic Orthodoxy.

6. Russian Orthodoxy.
Conversion in Kiev — St. Vladimir. Quality of Kievan Christianity. Kievan Culture. Shallows
and Hidden Darkness. Tatar Conquest Beginning of Moscow Kingdom. Early Russian
Monasticism — St. Sergius. Consolidation of Russian Lands under Moscow. Independence from
Byzantium — Messianic Theocracy. Muscovite Domination of the Church. Inner Crisis and
Turmoil. Conservatism and Ritualism. Western Leanings and Resistance to Them. True
Holiness. The Seventeenth Century. Encounter with the West. Schism of the Old Believers.
Reforms of Peter the Great. The “Synodal Period.” Culture Under Peter the Great. Bridge and
Unifier. Tragic Halt.

Short Biliography
History.
Doctrine, Spirituality, Liturgy.

1. The Beginning of the Church.

Acts of the Apostles.
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is the cornerstone of Church history. Written by the
evangelist Luke as the sequel to his own Gospel, it tells us of the Church‟s first years, of the ini-

3
tial events in her life.
1
It describes the first Christian community in Jerusalem and its persecution
by the Judean authorities, the preaching of the apostles — especially that of St. Paul — and final-
ly the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. The historical value of this account has
often been challenged; indeed, at first sight it may seem remote from the modem conception of
the functions and methods of history. There are many “blank pages” in Acts, many things passed
over in silence. Sometimes it is more like a commentary than a simple narrative of events. But in
reading it we need to remember that, just as the content of the Gospels is not exhausted by the
description of the life of Christ, so Acts was not intended to be merely a historical chronicle.
This account, later a book in the New Testament, was written at a time when the Church,
after emerging from the first stage of her development and establishing herself in many major
centers of the Roman Empire, was already fully conscious of her mission and was beginning to
crystallize in writing her earliest experiences. St. Luke, more than all other New Testament writ-
ers, may be called a historian in our sense of the word; nevertheless, he did not focus his atten-
tion on history alone, or on history as such. His theme is the Church, as the culmination of the
New Testament, as the fulfillment in the world — that is, in human society and in history — of
the work Christ has accomplished. The subject of Acts is not simply the history of the Church,
but her essential nature and living image as they were revealed in the very first years of her exis-
tence. The book also contains the first doctrine of the Church, with the facts of her life as illustra-
tions; it therefore includes only facts that are of service to this teaching and vital to its under-
standing. All succeeding generations of Christians have interpreted this book doctrinally, for they
have seen in the community at Jerusalem, in the apostles‟ preaching, and in the life and teaching
of St. Paul the pattern that set the standard of Church life for all time, and the inspiring beginning
that laid the foundations of the Church‟s entire subsequent history.
Acts begins its account with events which, for the historian, are still only on the threshold
of Church history: the Ascension and Pentecost. But in St. Luke‟s perspective the Church is
based on these events; they are what gives meaning to her existence, which the succeeding chap-
ters of Acts portray.
A small group of disciples — fishermen (“simple men, without learning” as St. Luke de-
scribes them), women, a few relatives and friends of the Master — here in its entirety was the
“little flock” left behind after Jesus of Nazareth. What is it that will make them fearless preachers
and lead them to the ends of the world? It is the descent of the Holy Spirit, the mysterious trans-
formation after which all that Jesus did and taught will become their own strength. Thereafter He
Himself will act through His disciples and in them His presence on earth will continue.
But what is the content of this witness? Before beginning the actual history of the
Church, we should recall to mind — in very general terms, of course — that Gospel, or “good
news,” which is the basis of Church life and Christian preaching to the world. In the days of His
earthly ministry Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God to men. And the meaning of His preach-
ing and His works was this: that His coming is also the beginning of this kingdom, that the Son
of God has come to reveal the kingdom to men and bestow it upon them. Although they have
been torn away from God by sin, have been subject to evil and death, and have lost their true life,

1
Since pronominal references to the Church in the major languages other than English are usual-
ly feminine, a compromise was effected in the style of this work, with the Church as “she” in its
earliest period, and “it” starting with its growing incarnation and institutionalization. Cf. “The
Church and the Greco-Roman World,” pp. 25 and following. (Editor‟s Note.)

4
through faith in Christ men may again come to know the one true God and His love for the
world; in union with Him they may inherit the new, eternal life for which they were created. Je-
sus taught that the world does not accept the kingdom of God, because the world “lieth in evil”
and has loved the darkness more than the light. The Son of God, therefore, has brought to men
not only true doctrine and knowledge of the kingdom, but also salvation. He has conquered evil
and sin, which ruled over mankind.
By His whole life He showed us the type of the perfect man, that is, of a man utterly ob-
edient to God. The authority and power by which He forgave sins, healed the sick, and raised the
dead existed only through this love and obedience. In His own Person He revealed the kingdom
as complete union with God, as the power of love and sacrifice for God and men. He was deli-
vered up to a shameful death and abandoned by all, yet remained the image incarnate of com-
plete self-surrender, perfect love, and absolute humility. By this surrender of self, love has tri-
umphed over hate, and life has conquered death, for God raised Christ from the dead. The evil of
the world and the forces of disintegration that rule it have proved powerless, and in one Man they
have been overcome. In one Man the kingdom of God — of love, goodness, and eternal life —
has penetrated the realm of sin and death.
Christ did not win this victory for Himself, but for all men — to save them all and lead
them into that kingdom which He brought into being. Therefore, at the very outset of His work,
He chose twelve witnesses — men who were with Him continually, who heard His teachings and
beheld His works, who were to be witnesses of His death, resurrection, and glorification. And
when, by way of death on the Cross, He entered upon His glory, He entrusted His kingdom to
them, promising that after His glorification He would bestow His power upon them, so that what
He alone had done they all might do. With His power they would be able not only to tell men
about Him, but also to lead them to Him and make them partakers of His kingdom.
Such was His promise, and on Pentecost it was fulfilled. On that day the little band of
disciples received the power to witness, not only to the Master‟s life and miracles, but also to the
fact that He is the Savior, King, and Lord of the world. For the disciples it is in the Church that
His life continues; His dominion and power become realities through their hands, and His life
becomes the new life of all who believe in Him. The coming of the Holy Spirit means all of this
— out of the little flock it makes the Church.
Pentecost took place in Jerusalem. The apostles were Galileans, inhabitants of the north-
ern part of Palestine, and we are told by St. Mark and St. Matthew that it was in Galilee that they
first saw the risen Lord. But in Acts, St. Luke emphasizes the Savior‟s words as He instructed
them not to leave Jerusalem, and the fact is important for an understanding of Church history.
Jerusalem was the focal point of all the religious and national expectations of the Jews, and the
heart of all Old Testament history. Steeped in the golden legend of Solomon‟s glory, in the past
the city had witnessed the political flowering of Israel. Now, in a time of captivity, she recog-
nized even more clearly her role as the mystical center of Israel, the Holy Zion where, on the yet
hidden “day of the Lord,” the Messiah must appear to save His people and restore His kingdom.
In the visions of the prophets this messianic kingdom had been transformed from a narrowly na-
tional, political restoration into the religious renewal of the world and the triumph of truth and
justice. They had envisioned the Messiah Himself as the Savior of mankind from sin and death.
And so on Pentecost St. Peter answered the questions of the perplexed crowd in the words of the
prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit
upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17), and he professed his faith that the “great and notable day of the
Lord,” which every Jew awaited and believed in, had already come. This meant that for Chris-

5
tians the Messiah was here and all the promises and expectations of the Old Testament had been
fulfilled; the messianic kingdom had arrived. It meant also that the glory of the Lord promised to
Jerusalem had come down upon her and that the Old Testament history of salvation had culmi-
nated in the Church.
Such was the meaning of the first chapters of Acts, the prologue to Church history. The
unbeliever may doubt their historicity. But even he must admit that at no time have Christians
failed to believe in this divine origin of the Church, and unless this belief is kept in mind it is vir-
tually impossible to understand the whole subsequent development of her history.

Community in Jerusalem — The First Church.
A small sect within Judaism — viewed superficially, this is a possible definition of the
Christian status in Jerusalem during the very early years. There were many similar sects and reli-
gious factions in the Jewish world of that era. It was a period of religious and political excite-
ment, of a heightening of the hopes and expectations connected with Israel‟s national destiny and
the biblical prophecies of the ultimate triumph of the chosen people. The time of the final revolt
against the hated Roman rule was approaching; the destruction of Jerusalem was near at hand.
“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). The question the
disciples addressed to their departing Master burned deep in Jewish hearts. But for the Christians
(and at first almost all of them were Jews) their own faith was the answer, for the confession of
Jesus as the Christ was central to it, and in bringing their own kindred to the Messiah they saw
their first goal, for He had come to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” If He had been cruci-
fied by the rulers of the people, Israel could still repent and turn to her Savior. “For the promise
is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39); these words of Peter‟s first address to the Jews
were the basis of all the early preaching. For the first Christian generation, which was by birth
almost completely Jewish, the conversion of Israel seemed the fulfillment of Christ‟s covenant.
He had charged His disciples to begin preaching about Him in Jerusalem and Judea, and we are
told in Acts that a great many Jews were converted at the very beginning. Later there was to be a
final and total break with Judaism, but before that event the Church lived believing in the possi-
ble conversion of Israel.
The explanation for this belief is a fact which seems strange to us now: the first commu-
nity in Jerusalem not only did not separate itself from Judaism, but even preserved Jewish reli-
gious forms intact in its own life. The apostles observed the appointed hours of prayer and all the
ritual injunctions concerning food; when St. Paul came to Jerusalem, he agreed without objection
to a request by St. James and the presbyters that he perform the ceremony of ritual purification,
in order that “all may know...that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law” (Acts
21:24). The Temple at Jerusalem remained for Christians a place of prayer, instruction, and
preaching. Even when the initial link with it was broken and Christian worship began to develop
independently, that worship retained — and always will retain — the stamp of its Jewish origins.
The fundamental principles of Orthodox worship were determined almost entirely by the Temple
and the synagogue.
Although we do not at first see any sharp break with Judaism, this does not mean, as
some historians once thought, that Christianity began to experience its own radical newness only
later, after entering the Greco-Roman world; that only then, under the influence of that world,
did it create its “original” pattern of life and organization. The fact is, this sense that a radical
change had taken place in world history and human life was the most basic and outstanding trait
of the early Christian community as described in Acts and St. Paul‟s epistles. But we must un-

6
derstand that for the Christians of Jerusalem the preservation of the Jewish religious tradition and
mode of life was not a mere survival of the past from which they were released as they grew in
understanding of their own faith. On the contrary, they observed the tradition because for them it
all bore witness to the truth of their faith. Christ Himself had declared His work to be the fulfill-
ment of the Scriptures: “Thus it is written...thus it behoved...” (Luke 24:46). “You pore over the
scriptures…it is of these I speak as bearing witness to me” (John 5:39). The old accustomed
words and ancient rites were now radiant with new light, and in them Christians were always
discovering new points to confirm the truth and plenitude of the New Testament. St. Matthew‟s
Gospel, written in the Judeo-Christian milieu, was later to express this fundamental Christian
belief in the Old Testament as prophecy and doctrine about Christ.
Just as the prophecies have come true and the Church is the culmination of the Old Tes-
tament, she also, while preserving Old Testament doctrine, incarnates in her life the “new thing”
revealed in Christ: the society that Christians compose, which, despite all its links with the tradi-
tional religion, is quite distinct from it.
The New Testament Scriptures, already set down in Greek, called it ekklesia — the
Church. In the social and political life of the Greco-Roman world this word signified an official
citizens‟ assembly with legislative powers, called together to decide on public questions and ex-
press their sovereign will. But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the so-called
Septuagint, made in Alexandria during several centuries before the Christian era — this term ac-
quired a religious meaning, that of the company of God‟s people, the chosen people whom God
Himself has summoned to His service. Thus the application of the word to the Christian commu-
nity in the New Testament indicates that even from the beginning this community knew itself to
be a divine institution called to a special ministry. It was not to be merely a religious brotherhood
or spiritual society, but the Church, the visible company of those who have been called to declare
God‟s will and carry out His work. “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy
nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people
of God” (I Peter 2:9f.) — here is the definition of the Church we find in Peter‟s first epistle.
So new and so holy was this company that joining it is already defined in the Gospels as a
new birth, accomplished through a symbolic act. This is baptism, the liturgical immersion in wa-
ter of the new Christian, which commemorates and symbolizes Christ‟s death and resurrection.
On the day of Pentecost those who believed in St. Peter‟s preaching asked him what they must
do. “Repent,” Peter said to them, “and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ,
for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). The early
Church lived by the experience of baptism, men were brought to it by the call of the Gospel
preachings; the community‟s liturgical life was bound up with baptism, and the symbols and al-
legories of the earliest Christian paintings on the walls of the catacombs testify again and again
to the tremendous power of regeneration the first Christians experienced in the baptismal water.
1

Baptism ushers men into the new life which is still “hid with Christ in God,” and into the
kingdom of God, which in this world is as yet only the kingdom of the age to come. In early
Christian experience the Church was the anticipation of the future by faith; she was the myste-
rious growth of the seed that had been cast upon the earth and was now hidden in it. “Maranatha
. . . the Lord cometh” — with this triumphant liturgical cry Christians express both their expecta-

1
Cf. V.V. Weidle, Baptism of Art (Westminster, England, 1950).

7
tion that Christ will come again in glory and their faith that He is implicitly present among them
now.
But if this new life begins with baptism, the central act of the community, in which it pro-
fessed its essential nature as Christ‟s kingdom, was the breaking of bread. On the night before
His Passion, Christ Himself commanded His followers to continue this act. It was a meal in
common, modeled after the supper Christ had eaten with His disciples. At this meal the Euchar-
ist, or thanksgiving to God for Christ‟s sacrifice, was offered up, after which all who were
present divided the bread and wine among them and through it became partakers of the Body and
Blood of Christ, that is, of the life of Christ Himself. All the records of the time which have
come down to us testify that then, as always, Christians believed that in the breaking of bread
they were united with Christ Himself.
The breaking of bread took place from house to house, at gatherings of the community
separate from its attendance at the Temple. And the special day of the Eucharist was the first day
of the week, the day following the Sabbath, on which, according to the apostles‟ testimony, Chr-
ist had risen. Christians call this day the “Lord‟s day.” Here was perhaps the most vigorous ex-
pression of the early Church‟s awareness of herself as an absolutely new beginning which was
leading Christians beyond the framework of the traditional religion. During the three centuries
that preceded Constantine, the Christian holy day was not a day of rest but an ordinary working
day. It was not the “seventh” day, which men since ancient times had reckoned as the final day
of the week; it was the following day. In this conscious departure from the earlier emphasis of
the week, the Church bears witness to the fact that her own life, as it flows onward in this world,
is a foretaste of that eternal day which dawned on the morning of the first victory over death.
“For ye are dead,” said the Apostle Paul, “and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ,
who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:3f.). At that
time these words were understood literally: into our familiar, everyday world and natural human
existence had come a great and growing light — the dazzling radiance of another world, of eter-
nal life.
Thus the little Judean sect, almost unnoticed by the world when it first emerged, felt itself
to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world the source of the new light, called to enligh-
ten men and save them.

Early Church Organization.
This community has often been contrasted with the “organized” Church of a later age, as
though early Christians had been a kind of fluid, ecstatic brotherhood living on inspiration, with
no authority except the “breath of the Spirit.” In fact, however, from the beginning the very con-
cept of a Church included the idea of an organized society, and nothing was more foreign to the
early Christian outlook than any kind of opposition between spirit and form, or between freedom
and organization. Human society, they believed, was now filled with the Spirit of God and was
thereby a vehicle of the divine life, so that everything human in society becomes a channel for
things divine, while everything spiritual is made incarnate in the life of mankind. When Paul
called the Church the Body of Christ he had simply found words to describe something Chris-
tians had experienced from the very beginning — the sense of the Church as one body made up
of the many people united by the new life — in the language of a later day, the life of grace. “For
by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (I Cor. 12:13).
The idea of an organism presupposes a structure essentially hierarchical in character. In
the very first descriptions of the Church we see a definite ruling body invested with power and

8
authority. This was the Twelve, the original group of disciples whom Christ Himself had chosen.
“It is not ye who have chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” This election by the Savior and not by
men was the source of their unique and incontestable authority, and it was through them that the
Lord‟s dominion was exercised in His Church. They had witnessed His earthly life; when they
preached about Him they were telling of what they themselves had heard, seen, and felt. At Pen-
tecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and granted the power to give a reliable account of
their witness and to practice it in this world. They were also granted the power to teach, “to bind
and loose,” to make decisions — in a word, to be the architects of the Church. To enter the
Church, therefore, meant to believe in their teachings; the community itself “continued steadfast-
ly in the apostles‟ doctrine and fellowship” (Acts 2:42).
The significance of the Twelve as the cornerstone of the Church was so indisputable to
the first community in Jerusalem that its first act, even before Pentecost, was to complete their
number, replacing Judas who had shown himself a traitor. This twelfth man had to be one of the
early disciples. “Of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was
taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection” (Acts 1:21f.).
This choosing was thought of as an election by the Lord Himself: “And they prayed, and said,
Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen,
that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell . . .
and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:24-26).
The author of Acts singles out Peter as the leader of the apostles, the spokesman of their
unanimity. It is Peter who proposes filling the gap in their number and who explains the meaning
of Pentecost to the bewildered crowd in a sermon. He it is, also, who replies to the accusations of
the Judean rulers and pronounces judgment upon Ananias and Sapphira, whose evil cunning had
disturbed the solidarity that prevailed in the life of the first Church. In a later age the position of
Peter in the early community and among the apostles became a bone of contention, and eventual-
ly this controversy separated the Christian West from Eastern Orthodoxy. But in Acts he always
speaks in the name of all the apostles and expresses only the common consensus of their witness.
In Eastern tradition he has always remained the “supreme apostle.” But this primacy has been
understood as a gift of grace to be the voice of apostolic unanimity — not in terms of any special
power over the apostles or the Church.
2

The apostles governed the Church, but their basic ministry was the “ministry of the
Word,” the preaching of Christ. Therefore, when the number of disciples multiplied and the cares
of ruling the community increased, they proposed that special persons be chosen for this admin-
istrative work, so that the Twelve would be able to give themselves “continually to prayer, and to
the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude,” and they chose seven
men, “whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on
them” (Acts 6:4-6). In the selection of these seven, Luke gives us the fundamental principles
upon which the Church‟s hierarchy and its later development are based. If the apostles had been
chosen by Christ Himself, these new ministers had been chosen by the Church, but at the apos-
tles‟ initiative and with their approval. Moreover, after the election of the seven, each was or-
dained by the apostles through the laying on of hands. It was the apostles who decided the condi-
tions for selection; those chosen must be “men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wis-

9
dom” (Acts 6:3). Thus all ministry in the Church, indeed her entire hierarchic structure, is rooted
in her apostolic beginnings; this means that she is rooted in Christ Himself, since the apostles
were His witnesses. The Church chooses her own ministers, but it is God Himself, through the
hands of the apostles, who bestows upon them the special gift of the Spirit to perform their min-
istry.
But although their preaching and teaching was the link between all the churches, each
Church through its local hierarchy also received the apostolic gifts and doctrine in full measure.
In the community at Jerusalem, the model upon which all the other churches were based, even at
a very early stage St. James and the presbyters exercised authority along with the apostles. The
apostles moved on, but everywhere local hierarchies remained to continue their work, preserve
their witness, hand on their gifts, and — in harmony with all the other communities — to realize
in this world the unity of the Church as the one, indivisible people of God which is everywhere
assembled together to proclaim the new life. In this way we are given from the outset an example
and definition of what later became known as “apostolic succession.”

Life of Christians.
But what, one may now ask, was the positive ideal of life held by this community? For
the early Church, unity in love was the ultimate value; it was the supreme purpose of life that
Christ Himself had revealed to men. The Church was the restoration of the unity that had been
broken and torn asunder by sin; those who were baptized, who were living in union with Christ
and sharing in His life through the breaking of bread, were reunited with God, and in God they
also found unity with one another.
This unity was demonstrated above all in the active love through which each Christian
was conscious that he belonged to all the brethren, and conversely, that they all belonged to him.
The unity of Christians with one another is now, alas, only symbolized by their communion in
divine service; in the early Church the liturgy was the crowning point of a real unity, a continual
communion in everyday life; moreover, the liturgy was then unthinkable apart from that commu-
nion. In early Christian writings no other word is so often repeated as “brother,” and Christians
of that age filled the idea of brotherhood with vital meaning, which showed clearly in their unity
of thought: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul . . .”
(Acts 4:32).
Brotherhood also meant active mutual support among Christians “of all for all” — a care
which was both material and spiritual. “And all that believed were together, and had all things in
common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
need” (Acts 2:44f.). The very smallness of the Christian community in Jerusalem made it possi-
ble to put unity of life into practice in a radical way through sharing their property. This pheno-
menon, inaccurately described as “primitive Christian communism,” was not the product of any
specifically Christian economic or social theory, but a manifestation of love. Its meaning lies not
in community of property as such, but in the evidence it gives us of the new life that manifested
itself among them, entirely transforming the old. In the Pauline epistles we find the summons:
“Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give” (II Cor. 9:7) — a remark
which points to the survival of private property in other Christian communities. But the utter de-
votion of the Jerusalem community — the brotherhood of “beggars” as St. Paul called them —
remains forever in the mind of Christendom as an ineffaceable example and legacy, the ideal of
an authentic regeneration of all human relationships through love.

10
The early Church has often been described as indifferent to this world and as existing in a
continual tense expectancy of the End. But the new life also involved a new attitude toward the
world; since for Christians this love is not an internal affair of the Church, but, on the contrary,
the essence of her witness in the world. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if
ye love one another” (John 13:35). If we read the New Testament with care we discover a com-
plete doctrine concerning the world and how Christians should relate to it and live in it. The
Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the figure of the merciful, succoring Christ are proclaimed
to the world by the Church and will remain the world‟s ideal even when men reject the Church.
And when Christians have sought the basic standards by which to determine their relationship to
the state, to the family, to work — indeed, to all aspects of human life — have they not always
searched the epistles of St. Paul? The expectation of the End, the prayers for the coming of Chr-
ist — everything which it is now the fashion to call eschatological — cannot, without doing vi-
olence to historical truth, be divorced from this positive ideal. The kingdom to come for which
Christians pray is for them inseparable from judgment, and their judgment will reflect the precise
extent to which they have embodied their faith in their own lives, i.e., in the world. “Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these. . .” (Matt. 25:40). Through Christ the kingdom of
God has entered human life in order to regenerate it.
Here, then, is the image of the Church bequeathed to us by the records of her earliest
days. Does this mean that she had no failings or weaknesses then? Of course not. The author of
Acts mentions many of them, and in the Pauline epistles whole chapters will be devoted to ex-
posing and scoring these sins. But as we begin the history of the Church, in which such sins and
weaknesses will too often be painfully obvious, we also need to keep in mind that “icon of the
Church” — that image and realization of the first experience of true life in the Church — to
which Christians will always have recourse when they seek to cure their spiritual ailments and
overcome their sins.

Break with Judaism.
The conflict with the Judean religious authorities, the next main topic in Acts, introduces
us to the second phase of Church history in the apostolic age. By providing the impetus for the
expansion of the new faith beyond the limits of Jewry, it brought the Church out onto the broad
highroad of history.
This conflict had been brewing since the very beginning. The members of the Sanhedrin
twice ordered the arrest of the heads of the Church, but on both occasions set them free after
questioning. After all, the Christians were not breaking the Mosaic law; their sole offense was
that they preached “the name of Jesus” and the resurrection of the dead. But the doctrine of re-
surrection had its adherents, particularly among the Pharisees. Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee,
spoke out in favor of avoiding conflict: “If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to
nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it” (Acts 5:38f.). The author of Acts constantly
emphasizes that the Jews have no objection they can raise against Christian teaching, since it is
itself based on the Scriptures and testifies to the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
But difficulties developed none the less, to which the interrogation and stoning of Ste-
phen gave explosive momentum under the zeal of Saul. “And at that time there was a great per-
secution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad through-
out the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . Therefore they that were scattered
abroad went every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:1,4). Up to that time the Church had
stayed in Jerusalem. We have already seen that the Church, by virtue of her very purpose, at the

11
beginning had to reveal herself as a united, visible company — the messianic community ga-
thered together around the Twelve in the Holy City in order to testify to the advent of the prom-
ised kingdom of God. Now she would have to accept as her lot all the heat and dust of her long
— and very human and earthly — journey through history, a journey that began with the expul-
sion of Christians from Jerusalem by force. The Christians of Jerusalem, who were Jews by birth,
naturally looked upon the Church as primarily the crowning point of their own Jewish tradition;
they did not yet comprehend her universal, pan-human mission. Indeed, the question as to
whether or not pagans should be received into the Church was to be one of her first acute grow-
ing pains.

The Apostle Paul.
The preaching to the Samaritans, St. Philip‟s conversion of the Ethiopian nobleman, and
the conversion of the Roman Cornelius were still exceptional cases; even missionaries who went
further afield — to Cyprus, Antioch, and Rome — at first preached only to Jews, though other
converts began at Antioch, and no doubt elsewhere, to share the Good News of Christ with pa-
gans.
The life work of St. Paul, which won for him the title of Apostle to the Gentiles, brought
to completion the formative period of the Church. Since Acts was written by his traveling com-
panion and “beloved physician,” and since Paul‟s letters to the various Christian communities
both describe his spiritual experience and expound his understanding of doctrine, we have more
information about him than about any other apostle. An orthodox Jew born at Tarsus in the Dias-
pora, his religious consciousness was completely conditioned by the insatiable Old Testament
thirst for the living God, but he also breathed freely in the atmosphere of the Greco-Roman
world. He received his religious education in Jerusalem from Gamaliel, the intellectual spokes-
man of the Pharisees; his consequent natural enmity to Christianity already revealed the whole-
hearted ardor with which he applied his religious ideals to life.
In the turning point of his life on the road to Damascus, which Paul always described as a
call to him “not of men, neither by a man” (Gal. 1:1) but by Christ Himself, he heard the voice of
the Master and was converted to Him completely and with finality. Books have been written to
explain the conversion scientifically as the result of psychological or neurological factors, or
even of the epilepsy from which he is alleged to have suffered. But it is clear that we are dealing
with a mystery which science, even with the aid of its most delicate instruments, cannot fully ex-
plain. What is important is that every word spoken by Paul that has come down to us shows how
his whole being and consciousness were rooted in the person of Christ, and attests his conviction
that he had received a special revelation of the Christ. That is why the Church, despite the abun-
dance of opposition and misunderstanding encountered by Paul during his life, does not hesitate
to acknowledge him as an apostle equal to the Twelve, and to number him among those whose
witness is a cornerstone of the Church.
After his baptism Paul spent three years in Damascus. He then went to Jerusalem, which
he was always to regard as the elder Church, the focal point of Christianity. Driven out by the
hatred of the Jews, he journeyed back north to Antioch, which was, after Jerusalem, the second
most important center of Christianity, and there rose to a leading position as a preacher in the
Christian congregation. His lifelong devotion to the “ministry of the Word” led to the founding
of a whole network of churches in Asia Minor, Greece, and possibly also in the western part of
the Roman Empire.

12
From the very outset of his ministry Paul was confronted with the whole problem of the
position within the Church of converts from paganism, a problem destined to affect the entire
future of the Church. Christianity had taken root in the chief centers of the Roman Empire —
Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome — even before he began to preach. As yet, however, the contro-
versy over it remained an intra-Judaic dispute. Thus the Roman historian Suetonius states that
the Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from Rome in the year 49 A.D. because the question of
“a certain Christ” had provoked outbreaks of disorder among them. Paul, too, began his preach-
ing in Asia Minor by addressing the local Jews. On arriving in a given city, he would go into the
local synagogue and, basing his sermon on the Scriptures read there every Sabbath, would begin
to preach about Christ. With only a few exceptions, the Jews rejected him and he would then turn
to the Gentiles. Paul never doubted that “the word of God should first have been spoken to you. .
.” (Acts 13:46) — i.e., to the Jews. The Jewish rejection of Christ was a “continual sorrow” to
him. “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen ac-
cording to the flesh” (Rom. 9:2f.). But he was equally certain that the Gospels had been ad-
dressed to the whole earth for salvation “unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18).
Soon it was no longer a question of individual conversions or exceptional cases; now
there were whole Christian communities of Gentiles. Did the ritual prescriptions of the Old Tes-
tament, which had remained in force among the Judeo-Christians of Jerusalem, apply to these
people? St. Paul answered this question with a flat “No!” Nor did he see the problem in terms of
the best method of converting Gentiles; he believed this was an issue involving the very essence
of the Christian Good News. First in his Epistle to the Galatians, written in the heat of controver-
sy, and later in a more academic manner in his Epistle to the Romans, he developed his doctrine
concerning the relation between law and grace and the freedom of Christians from the law. He
was not in the least inclined to deny the importance of the Old Testament. “The law is holy, and
the commandment holy and just and good” (Rom. 7:12). But the law simply defined evil and sin,
it gave no power of salvation from sin. Even when a man knows what is good and what evil, he
is often powerless to crush the latter. “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I
would not, that I do” (Rom. 7:19). Man is the slave of sin and he cannot free himself from his
servitude. If the setting up of a law or norm — the knowledge of it — included the power to
avoid going against it, there would be no need for salvation in Christ. But in giving man law,
God reveals to him the abnormality of evil — a sinful violation of His will concerning the world
and mankind — and at the same time condemns him; for sinful man, lacking the strength to save
himself from sin, lies under judgment. But He who is without sin has taken upon Himself the
whole burden of our sins and their condemnation under the law; by His death He has redeemed
us. In Christ law died and grace ascended the throne, and through faith in Christ and union with
Him in the baptismal death man ceases to be a slave and receives a share in His life.
Nor has this salvation been granted to the Jews alone, but to all mankind. St. Paul never
denied that the Jews were a superior people, God‟s elect, but for him they excelled other nations
not because the Word of God had been committed to them, but because through them the way
had been prepared for the advent of Christ. Any person who believes in Christ and shares in His
life and death must realize that now there is “neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28); if he still thinks
to obtain justification through fulfilling the ritual injunctions of the law, let him know that “Chr-
ist is become of no effect unto you, . . . ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). For in love lies the
whole meaning of the law, yet the law itself has no power to give love. In Christ love is freely
bestowed upon men, and through Him and in Him the law thus becomes unnecessary. In Him

13
“circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments
of God” (I Cor. 7:19).
When Paul and his companion Barnabas returned to Antioch and gave an account of their
travels, they met with opposition and censure from the element among Judeo-Christians which
continued to regard the observance of Mosaic law as binding upon all members of the Church
without exception. One can see from his epistles that Paul had constantly to defend his apostle-
ship and doctrines against the slander of his enemies, who sought to tear from his grasp the
churches he had founded.
In Church tradition the so-called apostolic council in Jerusalem has remained the model
for all subsequent councils and the standard of catholicity for the Church. In addition to the apos-
tles, the presbyters — the hierarchy of the local community — and through them the whole
Church in Jerusalem took part. It was James, the head of that Church, who summed up the deli-
berations and proposed a solution. By it the non-Jewish Christians were now officially freed of
the burden of the law. They were enjoined only from taking part in pagan ritual banquets (Acts
15:20). An epistle to that effect was prepared and sent to the Gentile Christians of Antioch, Sy-
ria, and Cilicia. Although this decision was not unanimously or everywhere accepted, a decisive
step had been taken: by freeing the converted Gentiles from Judaic law — thereby freeing them
from being included in the Jewish nation — the Church demonstrated that she was now fully
conscious of her world-wide vocation.
Paul continued his preaching ministry for many more years. Three of his great journeys
are described in Acts, but these did not exhaust his apostolic activities. In each city he followed
up his preaching by establishing the Church, consecrating bishops and presbyters, and building
up a Christian community. Teacher, shepherd, father as well as preacher, he embodied perfectly
the pastoral ideal, which he himself had formulated. “I am made all things to all men, that I
might by all means save some” (I Cor. 9:22). When the dangers of Judaic legalism were paral-
leled by that of a pagan mystery cult religiosity, in which the moral content of the liberty in Chr-
ist conferred upon converts was forgotten, Paul‟s infinite patience and tireless concern were con-
stantly used in the service of the full doctrine of the Gospel.
In the final analysis everything the apostle said, all the answers he gave, can be summed
up in one fundamental, tirelessly repeated affirmation and appeal: “In Christ.” These two words
give us a pattern for the Christian life. Faith and baptism have united us with Christ; Paul saw
Christians as living in such unity with Him, love for Him, and eagerness to serve Him that the
whole Church is nothing other than His Body, which He Himself has created through the Holy
Spirit. Everything in the Church, therefore — organization, assemblies, variety of gifts, even
administrative cares — exists only so that we may grow toward Christ and give back, both to
Him and to all around us, that treasure of grace which we have received from Him. If the Church
appears in the first chapters of Acts as the advent of the long-promised kingdom of God, Paul‟s
epistles now reveal this kingdom to be the life of Christ Himself, that life which has been bes-
towed as a gift upon men and which unites them in the Holy Spirit in an indissoluble union with
God and with one another.
The great apostle‟s life ended in martyrdom. In Jerusalem, to which he invariably has-
tened after every new journey, he was finally seized by the Jews. About to be flogged, he made
mention of his Roman citizenship, which entitled him to trial before the emperor. The narrative
of Acts records his arrival in Rome under arrest and his two years of preaching activity in the
capital, then suddenly breaks off. It is not by chance that the books ends in this manner; its main

14
theme is the journey of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome, from the center of Israel to the cen-
ter of the empire.
What was left when the ministry of the apostles had been sealed by their blood? There
were only insignificant groups of Christians scattered about the world. Nobody knew much about
them and at first hardly anyone even noticed their existence. Nevertheless, the first victory had
been won: the Good Tidings of Christ had been heard. Throughout the next period of Church his-
tory, the time of persecutions, the profound assurance of the apostle will resound: “As unknown,
and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things”
(Cor. 6:9f.).

The Church and the Greco-Roman World.
Christ was born when Augustus reigned alone upon the earth, as the Christmas hymn
proclaims. The Church has not forgotten that it began when the Roman Empire was at its peak.
The Greco-Roman world, which was the Roman state held together by Hellenistic culture, was,
after Judaism, the second motherland of Christianity. The myth that this world was unique and
universal has been undermined as our historical horizons have broadened and our understanding
of other ancient worlds and cultures has extended. Yet it is not merely a myth, and no Christian
can be indifferent to the significance of this tradition. For the Christian mind, history cannot be a
mechanical chain of cause and effect, nor can the foundation of the Church in precisely that
world and at precisely that moment be simply a matter of chance. “But when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). The world that was the “historical flesh” of
the Church met Christianity with hostility and persecution, yet it ultimately proved capable of
heeding the Christian teaching, and to some extent of responding to it. Nor can it be merely
chance that the sacred words of the Gospels were written in Greek, or that the theology of the
Church, the human answer to divine revelation, was clothed in Hellenic categories of thought.
The Gospel cannot be thoroughly understood if separated from its Jewish, Old Testament
sources; it is also inseparable from the world in which the Good News was first destined to be
proclaimed.
Although the empire of Alexander the Great fell apart almost within a year of his death,
Hellenism conquered with its culture, which gradually became a unifying pattern from Armenia
to Spain, from the Sahara to the Danube and the Rhine. The Roman conquests in the second and
first centuries B.C. only continued this Hellenization. It was in the world-wide monarchy of
Rome that the Hellenistic era reached its apogee. After a century of wars and devastation, there
the Pax Romana finally reigned. Roman law everywhere assured a good measure of justice, sta-
bility, and well-being. With good roads, economic prosperity, and a widespread exchange of
writings and ideas, it is not surprising that the source and symbol of all these benefits, Roma Au-
gusta herself, gradually became the object of a cult — the highest value of this newly-unified
mass of humanity.
Yet beneath the external glitter and prosperity a deep spiritual crisis was developing. Men
were no longer satisfied with the national gods of popular religion who had previously guarded
the narrow horizon of their city, tribe, or clan. Many sought new spiritual nourishment in the
Eastern mysteries that engulfed the empire. Temples to Isis, Cybele, and Dionysus were erected
in the center of Rome, and secret ceremonies, promising immortality and regeneration, were per-
formed. This was an era of premonitions and expectations. “A single Empire, a single world lan-
guage, a single culture, a single common trend in the direction of monotheism, and single com-

15
mon longing for a Savior” — this is how Harnack has summarized the circumstances in which
Christianity began to spread.

People of the Early Church.
The Jewish dispersion, which eventually resulted in the establishment of Jewish com-
munities in almost every city of the empire, was, of course, the intended instrument for this ex-
pansion. Historians have calculated that there were no less than four million Jews living in the
Diaspora, whereas the whole Roman population totaled fifty million. Despite the innumerable
religious restrictions that continued to separate the Jews from the “unclean,” their constant con-
tact with Hellenistic culture inevitably had some effect on them. In contrast to the Palestinian
rabbis, the Jews of the Diaspora felt a need to explain their faith to the outer world. The Septua-
gint had made the Bible accessible to the Greek-speaking world; later on, the Alexandrian Jew
Philo tried to express the faith of his fathers in the categories of Greek thought.
The pagans, meanwhile, were showing a growing interest in the East and its religious
core; a number of them became Jews, not by blood, but by the faith which gave central place to
the expectation of the Messiah. The network of synagogues that covered the whole empire be-
came the means by which the preaching of the Gospel penetrated the milieu closest to Judaism
and accessible to its spiritual influence.
Naturally, we cannot explain early Christian preaching and conversion in terms of any
single approach; Paul‟s epistles make clear how differently he addressed different groups. Yet
the center of all preaching was always the kerygma, the proclamation of a new event, the news of
the Savior who brought salvation and peace. There was no mass preaching to a crowd nor attrac-
tion of popular curiosity by outward ceremonies. More than by words, Christianity was served by
the actual renewal of life which appeared in the Christian community and was in the final analy-
sis alone capable of proving the life-giving force of the Gospel.
There was a time when it was assumed that the first Christians came from the interna-
tional “proletariat” which filled the large cities of the empire and which, because of poverty and
social inequality, was assumed to be more receptive to the proclamation of love, hope, and new
life. Paul‟s words to the Corinthians seems to confirm such a supposition: .” . . not many wise
men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble were called” (Cor. 1:26). But one has also
to account for James‟ reproaches of rich Christians, for Pliny‟s report of the number of Christians
“of various classes” and for references in other Pauline epistles to the city treasurer, a member of
the Areopagus, and a number of the leading women in Thessalonica.
How many Christians were there at first? Tertullian‟s claim, “If we alone are your ene-
mies, then you have more enemies than citizens, because all your citizens have become Chris-
tians,” is obviously rhetorical exaggeration. There was, however, a rapid geographical spread of
Christianity, with large churches in Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, and perhaps in Spain and Gaul.
The estimate of historians is that up to the time of Emperor Constantine‟s conversion at the be-
ginning of the fourth century they were still less than 10 per cent of the whole population of the
empire. Thus the Church retained for a long time its character of a small flock, a minority perse-
cuted by the world.

Further Church Development.
Since there are few records of the period from the apostolic beginning of the Church to
the middle of the second century, a number of historians have been tempted to look for some sort
of metamorphosis within it at this period, some break with the original “idea” of Christianity ex-

16
pressed in the Gospels. The organized Church with its hierarchy, doctrine, and discipline, as we
see it again in the middle of the second century, they regard as the product of various crises and
adaptations to social conditions; the molten, shapeless faith was Hellenized by being poured into
contemporary molds of thought. Today, however, scholars are giving increasing attention to the
voice of Church tradition, which so recently seemed to some of them a tendentious invention.
The Gospel, it turns out, must not be separated from the Church; it is the witness to the faith of
the Church, to its living experience, and cannot be understood apart from this experience. Frag-
ments of prayers, the signs and symbols on the walls of the catacombs, a few epistles from some
churches to others, have acquired new significance and are seen to represent part of a single de-
velopment, not a series of crises and ruptures. What was not recorded may have lived secretly,
retained in the uninterrupted memory of the Church, to be written down only centuries later. It
has become increasingly clear that the Church has no need to be restored and justified on the ba-
sis of the fragments that have reached us. Rather, only in the light of the Church, in the recogni-
tion of its primacy, can the meaning of these fragments be discerned and properly interpreted.
In our limited knowledge of the churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire, the
emphasis is on the Christian community gathered for baptism and the Eucharist. This double
mystery — rebirth from water and the Spirit and the breaking of bread — was not simply a ce-
remonial service but the source, the content, the very heart of primitive Christianity.
Tertullian‟s words, “Christians are not born but they become,” explain why the scanty
sources of the period speak most about baptism and the Eucharist. Christians became. This meant
that each of them could never forget the day when, after the secret growth of the seed cast into
his soul by preaching — after doubts, tests, and torments — he finally approached the water of
baptism. When he emerged from the holy water, the newly-baptized Christian was brought into a
brotherhood, a unity of love. Such is the everlasting significance of the Eucharist, communion
always through Christ with one‟s brothers. One bread, one cup, shared by all and uniting all in
one, memory transformed into reality, expectation into the Presence. How the words of
thanksgiving preserved from the early youth of the Church must have sounded when pronounced
by the celebrant over the offered gifts!
We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have revealed through
Jesus, your Child. To You be glory forever. As this piece of bread was scattered over the hills
and there was brought together and made one, so let your Church be brought together from the
ends of the earth into your Kingdom . . . Remember, Lord, Your Church, to save it from all evil
and to make it perfect by Your love. Make it holy, and gather it together from the four winds into
Your Kingdom, which You have made ready for it.
In the light of the Eucharistic meeting, every day and every deed performed were steps on
the way to the final victory of the coming Lord; because of the Sacrament, Christians do not look
on the Church as a simple human organization, with a leader and subordinates, authority and ob-
edience, but as a living organism imbued with the Holy Spirit.
3

At the head of the community stood the bishop. His authority was unique. Appointed by
the apostles or their successors, the other bishops, he was the head and source of the Church‟s
life. His special gift consisted in transforming the gathering of Christians through the Sacrament
into the Body of Christ and in uniting them in an indivisible union of new life. The power to dis-
pense the sacraments was indissolubly linked with the power to teach; he taught at the meeting,

17
not by his own initiative but according to the Spirit; he was the guardian of the apostolic tradi-
tion, the witness to the universal unity of the Church. “One must look on the bishop as on the
Lord himself,” writes St. Ignatius of Antioch in the beginning of the second century. Therefore
“nobody must do anything that has to do with the Church without the bishop‟s approval . . .
Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there
is the Catholic Church.”
4

The bishop was helped in administering the Church by the presbyters, or elders. While St.
Ignatius compared the bishops to Christ, he compared the presbyters to the apostles. Installed by
the bishop through the laying on of hands, they helped him in every way and passed on his teach-
ings and directions to the community. The primitive Church was a city community, a meeting of
Christians in one place around a bishop, but when the number of Christians grew and a single
meeting of this sort became impossible, the community split into a network of parishes depen-
dent on it. Then the presbyters replaced the bishop and became his fully-empowered deputies,
but through the sacrament of the episcopal laying on of hands all congregations retained their
organic link with the bishop as the beneficent organ of Church unity.
After the bishop and the presbyters came the deacons, the “servers.” They were the “ears,
hands, and eyes” of the bishop, his living link with his people. In the early Church, unity in wor-
ship was inseparable from actual material aid, brotherhood, concern for the poor and for widows,
for the burial of their brothers, and for orphans. The bread transformed into the Body of Christ
was a part of that daily bread, the food that Christians brought to their meeting for the common
table and to aid the poor. The deacons had the responsibility of distributing the gifts, helping the
poor, organizing the agape (“love feast,” as partaking of the Eucharist was called) — in sum, of
carrying out the unity of Christians resulting from their participation in the Sacrament.
St. Ignatius‟ statement that “without the bishop, presbyters and deacons there is no
Church” does not mean that only the hierarchy was active in it. Every member had his function
and each supplemented the other in indissoluble union. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but
the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are
diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of
the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal” (I Cor. 12:4-7). The various organizational
forms of the early Church must be understood in the light of an ideal which found expression in
service to one‟s brothers.
In St. Paul‟s epistles the word “church” is already used to designate both each separate
congregation and all Christians, the universal Church. This was so because each congregation,
however small, felt itself to be, in the union of bishop, clergy, and people, the incarnation of the
whole Church — the appearance and visitation here of the one Christ. Wherever the Christian
went he found the same broken bread — ”broken to bits but not divided” — heard the same
blessing, and was included in the same union. All the churches had one source and one norm:
apostolic tradition. Through its bishops each Church could attain the level of the Church as it had
first appeared, the miracle of Pentecost and the first community in Jerusalem.
In this network of churches we may distinguish from the very start senior churches in
each region which acted as centers of communication. These were the churches most immediate-
ly connected with the apostles, the most ancient and largest in membership. Because of the de-
struction of Jerusalem, the apostolic sees (or “seats”) of Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, and Alexan-
dria took on special significance. Rome, in particular, was sanctified by the blood of Peter and

18
Paul and “presided in love,” according to St. Ignatius of Antioch. Later Rome was to claim uni-
versal authority for its bishop, and the claim was to divide the Church. In the early years we hear
nothing of these claims. No one disputed the authority and significance of the Roman Church;
she was first and senior, but in union and equality with the others, as the center of the universal
consent of all churches. A final formalization of the organization of the Church was still remote,
yet behind the inconsistency of differing words and designations appeared the firm contour of the
Catholic, or universal and united, Church.

Basis of Persecution by Rome.
The persecution of Christians has been variously treated by historians from early times.
After the accounts of martyrdom had been embroidered by Christian piety into a shining legend,
a later age of enlightenment to which Rome appeared as an ideal of justice and culture attempted
to deny or minimize the fact of persecution. Whatever its destructive intention, this attitude has
helped to separate genuine documents from the vast hagiographic literature, so that we are now
in a better position to explain the persistent struggle against Christianity over three centuries by
the Roman Empire, which was in fact basically neither bloodthirsty nor fanatic.
When Christianity appeared, the most varied religions were flourishing in the empire, and
Juvenal‟s satires mock the fascination of these many exotic cults for the Romans. At first the au-
thorities took no notice at all of the Christians and did not perceive the radical distinction be-
tween them and the Jews. Judaism, though strange and unusual, was a legitimate religion, and
the Church survived its first decades, as Tertullian has said, “under its roof.” Even in this period,
however, we encounter hostility and frequently even hatred for Christians on the part of the mul-
titude. The lack of temples, the night meetings and secret ceremonies, all inevitably aroused sus-
picion, and naturally the most monstrous rumors developed about orgies, magic, and ritual mur-
ders at Christian meetings. Although this created an atmosphere favorable for persecution, the
Roman state was in general law-abiding and did not permit arbitrary outrages. The true cause of
the conflict must therefore be sought in the essential nature of the Roman state.
Like all states of antiquity, Rome had its gods, its national-political religion. This was
neither a system of beliefs nor a system of morals (the Roman citizen could and very often did
believe in foreign gods). It was a ritual, worked out to the last detail, of sacrifices and prayers, a
cult of primarily political and state significance. Rome had no other symbol to express and main-
tain its unity and to symbolize its faith in itself. Although in this troubled period very few be-
lieved in the symbol, to reject it meant disloyalty, being a rebel. Rome demanded only outward
participation in the state cult as an expression of loyalty; all that was required of a citizen was to
burn a few sticks of incense before the images of the national gods, call the emperor “Lord,” and
celebrate the rites. Once he had fulfilled this, he was free to seek the eternal meaning of life whe-
rever he wished.
For a man of the ancient world the validity of such a demand was self-evident. Religion
(the word is of Roman origin and without synonym in Greek or Hebrew) was not a problem of
personal choice but a family, tribal, and state matter. One‟s personal faith or lack of it had noth-
ing to do with religion, since religion itself had never been a problem of truth, but only an ac-
knowledgment of the existing system, its legitimacy and justifiability.
The Christians refused to fulfill this self-evident, elementary civic duty. Their act was
neither rebellion, condemnation of the state as such, nor even opposition to its particular defects
or vices. Starting with St. Paul, Christians could boldly declare their loyalty to Rome, referring to
their prayers for the emperor and the authorities. But they could not fulfill two requirements:

19
they could not recognize the emperor as “Lord,” and they could not bow down to idols, even
outwardly, without faith in them. “Lord” in the language of that time meant absolute master and
ruler, but for Christians the whole significance of their faith was that the one true Lord, Jesus
Christ, had come and ruled in the world: .” . . God hath made that same Jesus . . . both Lord and
Christ” (Acts 2:36). This meant that God had given Him all authority over the world, and that
henceforth He was the only Master of human life. “One Lord!” We no longer feel the force and
paradox of this early Christian exclamation that has come down to us, but it rang out then as a
challenge to a world in which lordship had been claimed through the ages by every authority,
every state, and every “collective.”
The indifference of Christians to the external world, their effort to free themselves from
it, has been regarded as a strange way of combating the pagan demands of the empire. In actual
fact, by their refusal to fulfill a requirement that was not taken seriously even by those who had
imposed it, the whole measure of Christian responsibility in the world was revealed for all ages.
By rejecting the formal requirement of the state, they thereby included the state within the pers-
pective of the kingdom of Christ and — however passively — summoned it to submit to the
Lord of the world.
Modern observers, even some Christians, regard this conflict as a struggle for freedom of
conscience, for the right of a man to make religion his private affair. For the early Church its sig-
nificance was much more profound. Christianity was not so much a new religion as an upheaval
in world history, the appearance of the Lord to do battle with one who had usurped His authority.

Blood of Martyrs.
The beginning of the persecutions was illumined by fire in the Eternal City. On the night
of July 16 in the year 64 a great part of Rome burned down, and popular rumor accused the em-
peror himself of arson. In order to distract attention from himself, Nero shifted the blame onto
the Christians, showing that the existence of Christianity was known to all. Although Nero‟s per-
secution was confined to Rome and its cause was arbitrary, it raised the question about Christians
for the first time on the plane of politics and the state, where it was also to be examined in the
future. During the rest of the century the frequent rebellions and disorders left Rome no time for
the Christians. But the persecutions were gathering head: Church tradition places the martyrdom
of Peter and Paul in Rome in this period, perhaps under Nero, and of John the Evangelist in the
East under Domitian (81-96).
The beginning of the second century brought the golden age of Roman history under the
best emperors that ever ruled her. Their morality was so attractive that the Christians were to
create a legend about the posthumous salvation of the first of them, Trajan. The Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, still hold an honorable place in the classical heritage
of antiquity. Yet precisely in these days, when all the moral values of the Greco-Roman world
seemed to triumph, the tragic conflict with Christianity became fully clear.
Trajan‟s answer to his friend Pliny the Younger, who, as governor of one of the remote
provinces, had asked him about the Christians, has been preserved. How was he to deal with
them? The emperor answered clearly and definitely: Christianity was itself a crime and must be
punished. Although he forbade seeking out Christians and repudiated anonymous reports, “which
are unworthy of our time,” from that time anyone accused of being a Christian who did not ex-
culpate himself by offering sacrifices to the gods was sentenced to death. True, the structure of
the Roman judiciary enabled Christians to exist even under this condemnation. Rome had no
state prosecutor; a private accuser had to bring a case against each Christian, while the state itself

20
at first refused to take the initiative for persecutions. This explains both the relatively long lulls
in the persecutions and their individual nature. Still, the situation of all Christians was terrible;
they were outside the law, and a single denunciation was enough for the irrevocable process of
accusation to result in death.
From this time, for two entire centuries, the line of martyrs was never really interrupted.
Sometimes there were outbreaks of mass persecution; for example, in Smyrna in 155, and in
Lyons in 167. Sometimes there were individual trials: the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch and
Simeon of Jerusalem under Trajan, of Telesphorus of Rome under Hadrian, of Polycarp and oth-
er Smyrnean Christians under Antoninus Pius, of Justin the Philosopher under Marcus Aurelius,
and so on. Whatever the situation, for two hundred years a Christian could not consider himself
secure, and of course this awareness of his outcast state, and his condemnation by the world, is a
central experience of the early Christian.
The descriptions of the persecutions that have come down to us reveal the whole signific-
ance the Church attributed to martyrdom, and explain why the Church seemed to recognize mar-
tyrdom as the norm of Christian life as well as the strongest proof of the truth of Christianity. It
would be false to reduce the meaning of martyrdom to heroism merely; if the truth of an idea
could be established by the number of its victims, every religion could present adequate proofs.
The Christian martyr was not a hero, however, but a witness; by accepting suffering and death he
affirmed that the rule of death had ended, that life had triumphed. He died not for Christ but with
Him, and in Him he also received life. The Church exalted martyrdom because it was proof of
the most important Christian affirmation, the resurrection of Christ from the dead. No one has
expressed this better than St. Ignatius of Antioch; taken to Rome for execution, he wrote to his
Roman friends requesting them not to attempt to save him: “Let me be fodder for wild beasts. . . .
For though alive, it is with a passion for death that I am writing to you. . . . There is living water
in me, which speaks and says inside me, „Come to the Father.‟ I do not want to live any more on
a human plane.”
5

In the cult of martyrs the Church laid the foundation for the glorification of saints; each
of them is a witness, and their blood is a seed that promises new shoots. The Church does not
consider its conflict with the Roman Empire a tragic misunderstanding, but the fulfillment of the
promise of the Savior: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have over-
come the world” (John 16:33). For the Church, persecution was the best pledge of victory.

Struggle of Christianity to Keep its Own Meaning.
The conflict between Christianity and the world was not confined to persecution by the
state. More dangerous for the Church than open persecution was its contact with the ideas and
beliefs of surrounding Hellenism. Here it encountered a threat that the faith would be distorted
from within, and the second century was marked by intense struggle as Christians strove to pre-
serve the purity and integrity of their doctrine.
St. Paul had already called preaching about Christ “unto the Greeks foolishness” (I Cor.
1:23). It was extremely difficult for a man raised in an atmosphere of Hellenism to understand
and really accept Christianity. Inevitably the philosophers of Athens, meeting on the Areopagus
to listen to St. Paul, interrupted him when he spoke of the resurrection of the dead. His words
about the incarnation of God, death on the Cross, and resurrection of the body could not be re-
ceived without a revolution in their habits of thought. Greek philosophy taught that in the body

21
we see a prison of the immortal soul, and in the world the Hellene saw only an eternal return, an
eternal cycle from which he sought salvation in the motionless world of ideas. Does not the se-
cret of the harmony of Greek art lie in its effort to find and express only the ideal form of the
world concealed behind its passing, changeable surface? Not real life, surely, full as it often is of
tragic contradictions. The sense of history, its irreversibility, the unrepeating nature of time, and
within this time the uniqueness and unrepeated quality of each event and each person, were all
profoundly alien to Hellenic psychology. The history of early Christianity, therefore, is a history
not of rapprochement between Athens and Jerusalem, but rather of a struggle through which
there took place a gradual “churching” of Hellenism which was to fertilize Christian thought for-
ever after.
The Church had first to protect itself from all attempts to reconcile Christianity too easily
with the spirit of the times and reinterpret it smoothly in Hellenistic patterns. If the Church had
remained only in Jewish molds it would not have conquered the world; but if it had simply
adapted these molds to those of Hellenistic thought, the world would have conquered Christiani-
ty. Gnosticism, the first enemy with which it came into conflict, was in fact inspired by the idea
of reinterpretation and reconciliation.
Gnosticism is the name usually given to a mixture of Greek philosophy and Eastern mys-
ticism, a strange religious and philosophical fusion, which emerged from close contacts between
the Greco-Roman world and the East. The movement reached its peak just at the time when
Christianity was beginning to spread. Typical outgrowths of a transitional, religiously excited
age, Gnostic tendencies reflected genuine spiritual needs as well as a superficial attraction to the
“wisdom of the East” and a morbid interest in mysterious symbols and ceremonies. As in theo-
sophy, Gnosticism combined a “scientific” approach to religious problems with mystical fanta-
sies and all sorts of secrets. Men were promised initiation into the ultimate mysteries of exis-
tence, but an emphasis on rites and consecrations tended to substitute religious sensuality for ge-
nuine religion.
As in our own time, men were groping for a syncretic religion, in which elements of truth
from all doctrines, philosophies, and religions might, as it were, be one. It was this effort to com-
bine and reinterpret all religions in its own way that rendered Gnosticism a danger to the Church.
It was far from hostile to Christianity — on the contrary, tried to include it within its own fold.
Christianity had also come from the East, the homeland of all secret wisdom; it was connected
with Judaism, which had a distinctive vogue in the Hellenistic world and also had its mysteries,
concealed from the eyes of the crowd. As the Church was taking its very first steps, we see be-
side it and sometimes even within it seeds of Christian Gnosticism, attempts to interpret the Gos-
pels, avoiding what seemed unacceptable or incomprehensible in them — primarily, of course,
the very reality of the Incarnation of God and the humanity of Christ. We sense uneasiness even
in St. Paul: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradi-
tion of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8).
The danger increased when converted pagans began to outnumber Jews in the Church.
Many were attracted to it by the same attitudes that explain the success of Gnosticism. By no
means all of them could immediately appreciate the vital distinction between Christianity and the
Eastern Hellenistic mystery religions; they saw in the Church what they wanted to see, the
crowning of their own religious experience. “These pagans thought that they were under no obli-
gation to abandon their former theories when they became Christian,” writes Professor Bolotov.
“On the contrary they thought it correct to interpret and understand Christianity with their aid, in
a high and perfect sense.” This Christian Gnosticism reached full bloom in the middle of the

22
second century, in the teaching of Basilides, Valentinus, Saturninus, Marcion, and others. Their
very number indicates the scale of the movement.
Attraction to Gnosticism cannot be ascribed only to corrupt imagination or interest in ex-
otic mysteries. Its strength — as well as its falseness — was that, although Christ was acknowl-
edged as the Logos, Savior, and Redeemer, the essence of Christianity as faith in the Incarnation
of God and His coming into the world was corrupted. Christianity was transformed into a special
mythological philosophy: instead of the drama of sin, forgiveness, and salvation, a personal en-
counter between God and man, Gnosticism offered a sort of cosmological scheme according to
which the “spiritual elements” in the world were gradually freed from the captivity of matter and
evil multiplicity gave way to abstract unity. It was a return in a new Eastern form to ancient
Greek idealism.
Some historians have argued that out of the struggle with Gnosticism came a whole me-
tamorphosis of the Church, transforming it into a structured, monolithic organization fortified by
the authority of the hierarchy and official doctrine. Berdyaev even regards the condemnation of
Gnosticism as a stifling of free thought. In the light of better knowledge of Gnostic documents,
such conclusions are hardly still tenable. Nevertheless, the movement did oblige the Church to
define more precisely the inner, organic laws of this life and to express in outward forms and
formulas what had composed the essence of Christianity from the very beginning. In Gnosticism
the Church saw the substitution of an alien and distorted image of Christ for the one by which it
lived. The Gnostics referred to secret legends and created a whole apocryphal literature about
Christ. Fragments of such Gnostic “gospels” have come down to us, written in the names of Pe-
ter, James, Paul, and John. “The image of Christ acquires . . . a character that is not only strange
and superhuman but spectral as well. He is present invisibly, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes
bodilessly, appearing variously as a child, an adult, or an old man . . . they responded to the cu-
riosity which sought secret knowledge instead of the traditional teachings of the Church, theolo-
gy and history.”
6
The Church faced the necessity of defining on precisely what basis the Gnostic
Christ was false and what would enable it to distinguish true tradition about Him from falsehood.

The New Testament.
We have seen that acceptance of Christianity had always been regarded as acceptance of
the evidence about Christ given by the apostles, the witnesses to His teaching. The apostles in-
terpreted their mission as service or preaching of the Word. Moreover, the Church itself is noth-
ing but the acceptance of this Word, so that the growth of the Church is defined as the growth of
the Word. “But the word of God grew and multiplied” (Acts 12:24). “So mightily grew the word
of God and prevailed” (Acts 19: 20). For the Church, the Word of God meant not only the ex-
pression of absolute truth in human language, but primarily the appearance of God Himself and
the revelation of His divine life and strength. In the Old Testament God created the world by His
Word, maintained life in it by His Word, and began its salvation by His Word. God not only
spoke His Word, He acted through it. The prologue to the Gospel of John has been interpreted as
an attempt to introduce concrete Judeo-Christian teaching to the abstract philosophical mind. Yet
it is wholly rooted in the biblical perception of the Word as divine life, divine action. “And the
Word became flesh.” This meant not only that in Christ God revealed to man a new doctrine and
imparted a new and absolute truth, but that divine life itself had come into the world and had be-
come the life of man. The preaching of the Word of God by the apostles, therefore, was some-

23
thing more than the evidence of eyewitnesses about Christ‟s life. It not only told about Christ,
but transmitted Christ Himself; it led men into His life and united them with it. In this under-
standing of the Word of God there is an organic link between the preaching of the apostles and
baptism.
This total dependence of the Church on the Word of God does not mean that it depended
solely on its written account in the New Testament text. The image and teachings of Christ as
proclaimed by the apostles were not a truth mastered once and for all; “the word of God is quick
[i.e., living] and powerful . . .” (Heb. 4:12), and is constantly proclaimed in the preaching of the
bishop. Christians commune with it in the sacraments and are inspired by it in prayer; it is the
source of the unanimity that links them. In all the sources we find reference to the words and
teachings of Christ, which were obviously known to all from the very start.
When records of the apostolic preaching began to appear, since this was evidence of the
Word of God, it acquired the same significance as the tradition about Christ in other forms, such
as preaching, liturgical prayer, and preparation of new converts for baptism. Since they already
possessed the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, Christians naturally added these writings to
them as their completion, interpretation, and fulfillment.
It is impossible for us to present here even briefly the history of these writings, which has
aroused such endless disputes among scholars. One point is obvious: whatever the “sources” of
our four Gospels and the relations between them; whatever ingenious hypotheses scholars may
have created in their efforts to reconstruct their genesis; they were received by the Church — that
is, were recognized — because their content coincided with the image of Christ and the content
of His teachings that the Church already knew. The Church did not “sanction” the New Testa-
ment writings; it recognized them as the Word of God, the source of its existence from the start.
By the end of the first century, when the apostolic period was drawing to a close, the
Church already possessed the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Although they
were not perhaps as yet collected into one volume, each had been accepted by the group of
churches for which it was written. Very shortly afterward they were combined in one quadripar-
tite Gospel, and in the middle of the second century the Christian apologist Tatian composed the
first harmony, or code, of the Gospels. The differences between the four accounts, and even ob-
vious divergences in secondary matters such as chronology and the sequence of events, did not
bother early Christians, who were not looking for precise accuracy of detail but for the truth
about Christ.
The appearance of the New Testament in the Church as a book, as Scripture, was there-
fore not a new factor, but a record of the founding tradition. Just because it was identical with the
original tradition as the Church already knew it, there appeared at first no need of a canon, or
precisely fixed list of accepted records or Scriptures. This situation enabled Gnostic teachers to
ascribe their own doctrines to the apostles and to present them in the form of “gospels” and
“epistles.” Hence, the problem of criteria became crucial for the Church in the middle of the
second century. Each new doctrine claimed to be a true interpretation of the Gospel — what
would enable the “Catholic” Church to judge among them?
These questions were answered by the first generation of Christian theologians, among
whom we must especially distinguish St. Irenaeus of Lyons, chief fighter against Gnosticism.
First of the great Fathers of the Church, he had known in his childhood Bishop Polycarp of
Smyrna and other presbyters who had seen the apostles, and he may have studied in the first
Christian school known to us, that of Justin the Philosopher at Rome.

24
Irenaeus‟ arguments against the Gnostics may be expressed by the term “apostolic suc-
cession,” but for him this meant more than the uninterrupted episcopal laying on of hands from
the time of the apostles; it meant primarily the unity of the Church and its life in time and space:

Having received this preaching and this faith, . . . the Church, although scattered in the
whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one house. She believes these things [every-
where] alike, as if she had but one heart and one soul, and preaches them harmoniously, teaches
them, and hands them down, as if she had but one mouth. For the languages of the world are dif-
ferent, but the meaning of the Tradition is one and the same . . . Neither will one of those who
preside in the churches who is very powerful in speech say anything different from these things,
for no one is above [his] teacher, nor will one who is weak in speech diminish the tradition. For
since the faith is one and the same, he who can say much about it does not add to it, nor does he
who can say little diminish it.
7

For Irenaeus the gospels of the Gnostics are false because they are alien to the witness of
the apostles: “Only that Gospel is true which was handed down from the apostles and is pre-
served from their time by orthodox bishops without additions or omissions.” We see here the be-
ginning of a New Testament canon and the principle used to define it: only the four Gospels are
genuine, because they contain the true witness of the apostles; but we know of their genuineness
because they have been preserved and passed on by the orthodox bishops. In other words, only
the Church can distinguish true Scripture from false, because the Holy Spirit always abides in it.
Thus, ultimately, Irenaeus opposed Gnosticism — the seduction of schism and partial in-
terpretation of Christianity — not by another interpretation but by the very fact of the Church as
a visible, palpable unity which alone preserves and transmits to its members the whole truth and
fullness of the Gospel. The canon of the Scriptures, the succession of bishops, the interpretation
of prophecies, are all only outward forms of this fundamental unity, aside from which they mean
nothing. The most significant answer the Church gave to the temptations of the second century
was its clear doctrine about itself, its “catholic self-consciousness.” Although this self-
consciousness had become more precise as a result of conflict, the Church was victorious not by
creating something new, nor by metamorphosis, but by realizing and strengthening what it had
been from the very beginning.

Sin and Repentance in the Church.
By the late second century primitive Christianity may be considered at an end. Although
the Christians in the Roman Empire still composed a persecuted minority, this minority had al-
ready clearly recognized its universal calling. Educated Christians addressed the emperor and
public opinion, pointing out the falseness of the accusations against them and presenting their
faith as the true answer to questions of the human mind. After his conversion St. Justin continued
his work as a philosopher; in his Apologies and other works, he was the first to attempt to explain
the truth of Christianity to the Hellenistic intellectuals. Others followed him. The very appear-
ance of these works indicates that an abrupt change was taking place. At first the world as
represented by the empire persecuted Christianity and tried to abolish it, but did not argue against
it — was indeed quite indifferent to its substance. The Church reacted to this indifference by
martyrdom; soon it could be neither abolished nor simply denied, but had to be disputed. Celsus‟

25
True Discourse, written very early in the third century, was the first scholarly repudiation of
Christianity. The writer had studied Christian books and was armed against the new faith by the
whole cultural array of Hellenism, but in his arguments we already sense the fear that an alien
“barbarism” is undermining the Greco-Roman world.
The Church was now a monolithic and universal organization with a precise “rule of
faith,” authority, and discipline. At the beginning of the third century it has been estimated that
there were up to a hundred presbyters in the area of Rome alone. The Church had its own ceme-
teries and almshouses, conducting an extensive charitable activity. In Africa almost three hun-
dred bishops gathered for Church synods, and all Asia Minor was covered with Christian com-
munities.
Nevertheless, this period of consolidation was also marked by a decline in the spiritual
level of the Christian community, a dimming of the flame rightly associated with the Church‟s
first decades. Of course, there had been grievous failings from the beginning; the change lay in
the altered attitude of Christians toward these sins. In the period of primitive Christianity the
Church was a community of “saints,” that is, baptized, dedicated, and thus newly-purified mem-
bers of the Body of Christ, and every sin was felt to be a terrible abnormality. St. Paul constantly
reminded the new Christian that since he was already consecrated and had received a new life, he
should live in accordance with this gift. Although sanctity does not mean sinlessness, since God
alone is sinless, it does mean awareness of belonging totally to Christ, body and soul; it means
inclusion in His life.
By the middle of the second century we begin to hear, along with hymns to the unity and
sanctity of the Church, admissions of sins by Christians. Hermas‟ Shepherd, a second-century
Roman document written by a layman, resolutely raises the question of sin in the Church. How is
it possible? If baptism gives birth to new life and frees man from the power of sin, what is the
meaning of its existence among Christians? It was hard to understand how there could be any
repentance “except that which we have made when we entered the water and received in it for-
giveness of our former sins . . . For he who has received forgiveness or sins ought not to sin any
more, but remain in innocence.”
The early Church cut off all who fell away from grace and rejected the new life. “For it is
impossible for those who have once been enlightened . . . if they shall fall away, to renew them
again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an
open shame” (Heb. 6:4-6). Unfortunately, however, sin continues to enter men‟s lives, and they
have no recourse but to repent once more. The Church is called upon to save, not to judge, until
the Last Judgment. Therefore a “second repentance” was made possible to the excommunicant,
permitting him to return to the Church and restoring the forfeited power of his baptism. As grad-
ually developed, this new chance for sinners was guarded by the requirement of confession to the
bishop or his representative, sometimes public confession; prolonged evidence of repentance,
including various sorts of penance; and reinstatement only by stages in the freedom of Christians
to worship together and partake of the sacraments. In very serious cases, restoration of the saving
power of baptism was sometimes withheld until the deathbed of the sinner.
Christians did not take the matter lightly. Hermas continues, “If anyone sin, submitting to
the temptations of the devil, only repentance lies in store for him, but if he keeps falling in order
to keep on repenting, let him not expect good fruits. His salvation is in jeopardy.” A little later
Tertullian, the African teacher of the late second and early third centuries, warned that “God al-
lows us to knock at the door of this second repentance once, only once.” One must “day and

26
night call on God and our Savior, fall at the feet of the priests, kneel before our brothers, begging
the prayers of all.”
Some historians have regarded this second repentance as a revolution in the mind of the
Church, a transformation from a society of the “saved” into a society of “those being saved.”
This judgment is superficial, however. As awareness of sanctity in the Church presupposes con-
stant repentance and a sense of one‟s own unworthiness, so now the evidence of decline did not
mean that the ideal of a society of saints had been abandoned. Life and history reveal the full
force of evil in man, even the “new” man who has been reborn in water and the Spirit. From the
beginning the Church had known itself to be a society of saved sinners, and in this apparently
contradictory combination of words we may find the explanation for its inconsistency in regard
to repentance. Christians were sinners to whom salvation was given. This salvation is not magic;
it is given for free acceptance, for struggle, for growth. While in the joy of the first decades the
Christians felt more forcibly the wondrous newness of the gift, as time passed they could not
help but become aware of the dimensions of the struggle to which it committed them. There is no
room in the Church for sin; yet it exists for sinners. Therefore the development of a “discipline of
repentance” — an obvious lowering of standards — does not mean a change in the Church‟s
original ideal, but a fulfillment of its eternal task, the salvation and renewal of man.
Many could not accept this realism of the Church, the increasingly obvious way in which
it was growing into the very stuff of human history; to them it seemed a betrayal. This attitude at
the time led to Montanism, a new heresy that came from Phrygia, long a region of religious fana-
ticism. About the year 150 Montanus, a newly-converted Christian, with two women, Priscilla
and Maximilla, started to proclaim the coming of the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ in the
Gospels. They taught that the second Testament, that of the Son, was not yet final. Only in the
last divine revelation, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, would salvation occur. This “new proph-
ecy” had been sent by God through Montanus and his two prophetesses. Montanus demanded of
his followers absolute moral rigor, celibacy, and voluntary martyrdom, for the end of the world
was at hand. Essentially it was an outburst of gloomy eschatology, the last and most extreme ex-
pression of the imminent expectation of the end of the world that characterized the first genera-
tions of Christians.
But Montanism was in fact a protest against the existing historical Church, and was con-
demned by the bishops of Asia Minor. It was nevertheless received almost ecstatically in Rome,
Gaul, and Africa, and much time was needed before its sectarian nature could be exposed; even
Irenaeus of Lyons defended it from condemnation for a long time. The most celebrated conver-
sion to the religion of the new prophecy was that of Tertullian. A fiery African, he has always
seemed nearly the quintessence of primitive Christianity; almost no one is so much quoted when
there is need to refer to the spirit of the early Church. One of the first Western theologians,
teachers, and apologists, he had a great influence on the whole life of the Church. But, like many
others, he could not accept its growth and the changes that resulted from it; he was scandalized
by the consolidation of Christianity. In his treatise De Pudicitia he repudiated what he had writ-
ten on repentance; he could no longer accept the idea, or the possibility of the forgiveness of cap-
ital sins. The Church could forgive sins, but it should not do so. Since the Church in which sin
still abides is not the true Church, he devoted the last part of his life to struggle against it.
The example of Tertullian best shows us the character of Montanism, with its longing for
the original purity and intensity of expectation of the first Christians. There is no denying that the
level of Christian life began to decline at this time, yet the Church‟s victory over Montanism was
crucial. It was facing the momentous question of whether it should remain a small band of per-

27
fectionists or whether, without altering its final ideal, it was right to accept the masses and start
their slow re-education. Should the Church remain outside the world and outside history, or
should it accept history as a field for heavy and prolonged labor? It was difficult to fight against
Montanism, which was fired with so much sanctity, faith, and self-sacrifice; by condemning it,
however, the Church condemned forever all attempts to dethrone the historical, visible Church
and to incorporate it into a third Testament.

Beginnings of Theology.
The mind of the Church was forged and the Church strengthened by persecution and
temptations. The best intimation of coming victory was the first flourishing of Christian thought
and the beginning of Christian culture that distinguished the third century. We have barely noted
Tertullian in passing. Special mention must be made of the Christian school of Alexandria and its
famous teacher, Origen.
Until the third century Christian literature had either been apologetic in character, oppos-
ing heresies and paganism, or had consisted of a simple statement of the basic principles of
Church dogma. The significance of the Alexandrian school was that it was the first to attempt to
reason out these dogmas as an integrated system and to reveal the truths contained in them as
sources of thought and knowledge.
We know little of the origins of the Alexandrian school; in all probability it grew out of
the teaching of new converts. The city was the intellectual capital of the Hellenistic world, and
every sort of preaching there acquired academic overtones. It was natural, therefore, that the
foundations for a scientific theology should be laid there, and theology recognized as the highest
calling for a Christian.
For the first of the famous Alexandrian theologians, Clement, Christianity was already a
higher knowledge — gnosis in the full and absolute meaning of the word. “If the Gnostic were
offered a choice between the salvation of the soul and knowledge of God, supposing that these
two things were distinct (although they are identical), he would choose knowledge of God.”
Gnosis is the vision of God face to face, the mystical illumination of His truth; the Christian pre-
fers this knowledge of God to all else and sees the purpose of his whole life in it. But a joyous
acceptance of the world, a “justification” of it, is also characteristic of Clement. This was a new
transforming experience, for the sake of which Christianity was already firmly rooted in the
world and triumphing there. How Is the Rich Man Saved? — the title of one of Clement‟s works
— is typical of his general outlook. He did not reject the world, but on the contrary tried to make
everything Christian. We find considerations concerning laughter and even domestic arrange-
ments in his writings. Everything is permissible if it is taken in moderation, but particularly if it
is subordinated to the knowledge of God and the truth in Him. This was the optimism of the first
union, not yet profound and often dubious, between Christianity and Hellenism.
In Origen, the successor of Clement, we see both the features of the heroic period of pri-
mitive Christianity and a new spirit, which was becoming more and more evident in the Church.
A Christian by birth, son of a martyred father, he was inspired by the ideal of martyrdom and his
Exhortation to Martyrdom, written during the persecutions of Maximinus (235-38), is still one of
the best documents of early Christianity. For Origen martyrdom meant more than confession of
Christ in the presence of one‟s persecutors. It was the whole life of a Christian, which in this
world can only be the “narrow way” if he is to strive for evangelical perfection. Origen was one
of the founders of the theory of asceticism and his influence was immense when, in the next cen-
tury, monasticism arose within the Church. His desire to follow the teachings of the Gospel to

28
the letter led him, as is known, even to emasculation. He has often been regarded as a pure intel-
lectual, remote from the life of the Church, immersed only in books; but in fact he was first of all
a Churchman, deeply rooted in the life and prayer of the Church, and his intellectual contribution
can be understood only if we remember that for him everything was subordinated to “the one
thing necessary.”
When he was very young he assumed the office of instructor, whose duty was to explain
the Scriptures to new converts. While devoting himself completely to this work, he soon came to
the conclusion that a simple reading of Scripture was not enough. Sitting in his lecture hall were
philosophers, scholars, men of great learning. The Word of God must be explained to them as the
highest revelation and all its depths uncovered.
The school of Origen soon outgrew its original task; it was open to all who were interest-
ed and became a forum for genuine encounter between Christian and pagan wisdom. It was not a
matter of Christian wisdom simply overthrowing the pagan, however; here was the first accep-
tance of Hellenistic values by Christianity in order to convert them to the service of Christ. “I
would wish you to use all the strength of your mind for the advantage of Christianity, which
should be your highest goal,” wrote Origen to his disciple Gregory Thaumaturgus. “To achieve
this I desire you to take from Greek philosophy those spheres of knowledge, which are potential-
ly an introduction to Christianity, and whatever information from geometry and astronomy may
serve to explain the sacred books; that what philosophers say of geometry, music, grammar, rhe-
toric, astronomy — namely, that they are handmaidens of philosophy — may be said as well of
philosophy itself in relation to Christianity.”
8
This represented a revolution in relation to profane
culture but in contrast to Gnosticism, Christianity was not subordinated to Hellenism, but Hellen-
ism rather proclaimed as a preparation of the minds of men for the higher revelation and under-
standing of the Scriptures.
The final meaning of all scholarship, as well as of Christianity itself, was the understand-
ing of the Word of God. Everything was subordinate to this, and there was no limit to the extent
to which one could become immersed in its meaning. Yet this understanding required not only a
special grace, illumination of the mind by prayer and of the body by ascetic practice, but also
scholarly preparation. Origen himself studied Hebrew and in his Hexapla copied the whole Old
Testament Scriptures six times, in parallel columns, placing beside the Hebrew original and its
transcription in Greek lettering all extant Greek translations of it. He adopted the methods of the
famous Alexandrian literary school, which had undertaken the study of ancient Greek literature;
and through him these methods became a fundamental part of Christian study of the Bible.
This work was only preparatory, however. There remained the interpretation of the Scrip-
tures, and here Origen struck out on new paths. The basic principle of his interpretation was the
Church tradition about the spiritual meaning of the Word of God, which lay behind the literal
meaning. The Old Testament prefigured the New, while in the New Testament are revealed the
eternal patterns of Church and Christian life. The Jews did not perceive these types in their own
Scriptures and rejected Christ, whereas the Gnostics, unable to understand the Old Testament,
rejected it on the grounds of being a revelation of a malicious and vengeful God. According to
Origen, all these Old Testament types became reality in the appearance of Christ, and therefore
He alone is the key to the Scriptures, just as the Scriptures are for us the only source of revelation
about Him. The Old Testament reveals the New, and the New reveals the coming kingdom of
God, when “God will be all in all” and all these types will be manifested in an eternal reality.

8
Origin, Epistle to Gregory, 3.

29
Origen‟s contribution to the study and interpretation of Scripture is very great. Although
preaching and theology had always been based on the Scriptures, he was the first to formulate a
systematically Christocentric conception of the Old Testament, and in his innumerable interpre-
tations he was centuries ahead in the development of an ecclesiastical exegesis. We cannot over-
look the danger of his approach to the Bible, however. In his extreme allegorism each word ac-
quired an incalculable number of meanings, some of them extremely fantastic. Allegory was fa-
shionable among pagan scholars of literature in Alexandria, and Origen had been influenced by
it. Modern scholars are attempting to differentiate between his typology — that is, the search for
true types and spiritual meanings — and his allegory, in which he applied arbitrary meanings to
certain events and words. In all likelihood Origen himself was aware of the distinction. It is diffi-
cult, though, to draw a real line between these two approaches, and allegorism was for a long
time a dangerous propensity in Christian theology, often substituting rhetorical contrivance for
the vitality and common sense of the Word of God.
Still more dangerous for the future was Origen‟s attempt to construct a Christian theolog-
ical system. This was contained in his work Peri Archon (“On First Principles”), which has
reached us only in a later, somewhat modified Latin translation, De Principiis. Although he
maintained that the only standard for any theology must be the rule of faith — meaning the tradi-
tion of the Church — he did not in fact discover a way to combine revelation and Hellenistic phi-
losophy so that the basic idealism of the Greek outlook might be overcome. On the contrary, his
system was an abrupt Hellenization of Christianity itself; he rejected the clear doctrine of the
creation of the world from nothingness, which is the key to any truly Christian cosmology, and
all the unique features of the biblical conception of the world as history — as reality — and not
an illusory tragedy of free choice. According to Origen, the world evolves from God and returns
to Him, by some incontrovertible law, which makes possible the reality of evil, of freedom, and
of salvation. But since all is eternal in God, this cycle of creation of the world is eternally re-
peated, ending unalterably with general restoration and salvation.
Origen ended his long and righteous life as a “confessor” — one who bore witness to
Christ under torture — dying from injuries suffered during the persecutions of Decius (250). His
longing for martyrdom, which had never slackened since his childhood, was satisfied. While his
figure is unusually attractive and his example inspiring, his theology was to play in the end a
fateful role in the history of Church thought, and only with great difficulty was the Church to
overcome its temptations and dangers.
Origen started the gradual process of Christianizing Hellenism and the struggle to over-
come it within the Church; this struggle was to be the basic theme of the later Byzantine centu-
ries of Church history. Perhaps without his “creative failure” the eventual triumph of Christian
Hellenism would have been impossible.

The Last Great Persecutions.
The third century was the time of the Church‟s last, most terrible fight with the empire,
but the dawn of coming victory was already approaching. One of the primary reasons for the de-
cline in Christian intensity had undoubtedly been the lull in the persecutions. From the death of
Marcus Aurelius (185) until the middle of the third century, the Church lived in relative security.
Officially, the prohibition against Christianity had not been lifted, and the long line of martyrs
was not actually interrupted, but the over-all situation was greatly improved. People had become
used to the Christians, they knew about them. An increasing interest in the East during the East-
ern dynasty of the Severi even made Christians — though not Christianity — somewhat popular.

30
Septimus Severus‟ niece, Julia Mamaea, invited the celebrated Origen to her palace so that she
could debate with him in the circle for religion and philosophy which she had founded; later Em-
peror Alexander Severus placed a statue of Christ in his private chapel; and finally, St. Jerome
called Emperor Philip the Arabian the first Christian emperor, which suggests that he had been
secretly baptized.
For these reasons the persecution that suddenly burst upon the Church in the year 249
seemed a terrible and unexpected trial and exposed in full clarity how far many, many Christians
had departed from the original intensity of faith and way of life.
Emperor Decius (249-51) assumed power at a critical moment. Rome was threatened
with ruin by the restored Persian empire and by profound internal disruptions and disorder. De-
cius believed that salvation lay only in the restoration of the ancient Roman spirit and a return to
the neglected and scorned traditions. He gave first priority to the restoration of state worship, and
this inevitably led to conflict with Christianity. Except for Nero, Decius was the first representa-
tive of Roman power to take the initiative in these persecutions as opposed to the system of pri-
vate accusation followed by test. In a special edict he ordered all his subjects to prove their loyal-
ty to the national gods by making the sacrifice.
The Church again responded with the blood of martyrs, including not only Origen, as we
have seen, but Bishop Flavian of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem. But
what startled the Church was the mass apostasy. “Fear struck them,” wrote Bishop Dionysius of
Alexandria, “and many of the more influential Christians gave in immediately, some giving way
to fear, others, as civil servants, to the requirements of their positions, still others drawn along
with the crowd. Some were pale and trembling, as if it were not they who were making sacrifices
to the idols but they themselves who were being brought to sacrifice; and therefore the crowd
mocked them.”
9
The same picture appears in the letters of Cyprian of Carthage: “There were
some who did not even wait to be summoned to climb onto the Capitol, or to be questioned to
renounce their faith. They ran to the Forum themselves, they hastened to their [spiritual] deaths,
as if they had wished it for a long time. And — O ultimate crime! — parents brought their child-
ren with them, so that they might lose in their childhood what they had received on the threshold
of their lives.”
10

The persecution passed liked a whirlwind and quickly abated, but it left the Church in
ruins. The question arose as to how to deal with those who had lapsed, who now rushed back for
forgiveness and reconciliation. While the Church had recognized a “second repentance” at the
beginning of the century, now the question was posed anew and more acutely. In the earlier time,
lapsed Christians had been the exception, so that a second repentance was also an exception, but
now it was a mass occurrence. When we remember what the witness of martyrs meant to the
Church — that it was the witness of the Church to itself, the proof of Christ‟s strength which
lived in it — then it becomes clear why the problem of the lapsed caused a lengthy dissension,
the last in the series of “temptations of the Church” that marked the late second and early third
centuries.
Against this background of dissension the figure of the great African bishop, St. Cyprian
of Carthage, stands out clearly. Like Tertullian, he represented the “pure” Christianity that cha-
racterized the brief but magnificent history of the African Church. A pagan teacher of rhetoric
and professor of literature, Cyprian repudiated everything on his conversion to Christianity. “The

9
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VI, 41, 11.
10
De Lapsis, 8, 9.

31
spirit descended from Heaven has made me a new man through a second birth. And immediately,
in a miraculous way, certainty wiped out doubt.” Very soon after his conversion he became bi-
shop of Carthage, the oldest of the African churches. Almost immediately afterward the persecu-
tion started. Cyprian hid, not from fear but in order to continue to direct the Church; in his ab-
sence the question arose about the lapsed Christians. The latter, knowing the sternness both of
Cyprian and of normal Church practice, bypassed the bishop and turned directly to the “confes-
sors” — those who had confessed their faith in Christ and paid for their faithfulness by impri-
sonment or torture. The Roman state had learned by experience and preferred not to create mar-
tyrs; it therefore left the steadfast Christians to rot in jail and subjected them to torture. The con-
fessors were the glory of the Church; their authority was indisputable, and they recommended to
the bishop that he accept the lapsed Christians back into Church communion.
This created a difficult situation: there were two authorities in the Church. Cyprian would
have liked to defer the question until his return, when there could be a general synod of bishops,
but the confessors regarded this as disrespect to their suffering. A paradoxical conflict devel-
oped, with the confessors and the lapsed Christians allied against the legitimate bishop and the
hierarchy. Alarm spread as well to the Roman Church, crimson with the blood of its own bishop;
there the presbyter Novatian opposed Cyprian as a man who had fled and should therefore him-
self be considered lapsed. In Carthage a whole party was formed against Cyprian, who was ob-
liged to resort to strictness and expel its leaders from the Church. Finally, in the spring of 251
Cyprian returned to Carthage and summoned a synod, which decided the problem by relaxing the
discipline of repentance. It divided the lapsed into two categories, depending on the degree of
apostasy, and established two forms by which they might again be accepted into the Church.
Some could be received only on their deathbeds, while others could rejoin after more or less pro-
longed periods of repentance.
A rather strange reversal occurred at this point. Those who had demanded that Cyprian
accept the lapsed immediately now cried that he was defiling the purity of the Church. They
were supported by Novatian in Rome, who had been consecrated bishop under obscure circums-
tances. With terrible swiftness this new schism of Novatianism spread through all the churches,
creating everywhere sects of the pure (cathari). The name alone indicates the attitude of the
schismatics and their enthusiasm for a pure (in contrast to the “fallen”) Church. Again, as under
Montanism, the Church responded by gathering its forces around its bishops and the undestroyed
continuity of catholic life. Africa united around Cyprian, the West around the newly-elected legi-
timate Pope Cornelius. From Egypt Dionysius of Alexandria, another luminous example of an
ecumenical teacher, wrote letters to everyone, begging all to maintain unity. Novatianism, like
Montanism, degenerated into a sect, remnants of which still existed as late as the seventh cen-
tury.
In Montanism and Novatianism we may see what is meant by the evolution of the Church
in these transitional decades. Formally, Novatian was right when he invoked tradition in his pro-
test against accepting the lapsed. Cyprian himself had been a typical rigorist before the persecu-
tion of Decius. But the teaching of the Church is not a logical system and is not constructed in
syllogisms. Novatian, who was true to logic, was torn from the life of the Church, while Cyprian,
outwardly self-contradictory, could still boldly state that he had introduced nothing new with the
question of the lapsed Christians, for he had taken his doctrine from the life of the Church. In
fact, nothing had changed in the nature of the Church or its sanctity, but it had become more
deeply conscious of the dichotomy between old and new in its earthly life. Novatian and his fol-
lowers, for the sake of their principles, were left outside the Church; such is the logic behind

32
every schism. They withdrew in proud scorn for the sullied Church of the lapsed. But in the pas-
toral heart of Cyprian and his truly catholic way of thinking, this Church of the lapsed remained
the same holy bride of Christ, which has no room for sin but exists to save sinners.
Cyprian‟s life ended in the glory of a martyr‟s death. On September 13, 258, he was
summoned to the proconsul. The original documents of his interrogation have been preserved.
Galerius Maximus the proconsul said, “Are you Thascius Cyprian, a priest of the sacrile-
gious?”
Cyprian answered, “I am.”
“The Emperors have ordered you to make sacrifices.”
“I will not obey.”
“I advise you to think it over.”
“Do as you are instructed. There is no need to take counsel in such a righteous deed.”
After consulting with the assessors, the proconsul read sentence: “You have demonstrated
that you are an enemy of the Roman gods and the holy laws. The most august Emperors could
not convince you to return to performing Roman religious ceremonies. As a warning to those
whom you have drawn into your criminal society, shall pay with your blood for your disobe-
dience to the laws. Thascius Cyprian is to be beheaded by the sword.”
“Deo gratia,” said Cyprian.
A crowd of Christians accompanied him to the place of execution, with lighted candles
and the singing of prayers. His martyrdom was transformed into a triumphant liturgical act. A
month before him Pope Sixtus II also bore witness. The police found him surrounded by clergy
who were conducting a meeting of the faithful. He died sitting in the episcopal chair, and his
deacon Laurentius was killed with him.
With the end of the century came increasing persecutions. The empire was falling, its
whole structure rocked under the terrible attacks of Germanic tribes from the north and the Goths
and Persians from the east. In these troubled years, when it was natural to seek scapegoats for so
many misfortunes, it was not difficult to inflame hatred against the Christians. Edict followed
edict, and throughout the empire new names of martyrs were added to the martyrology of the
Church. The persecutions probably never reached such intensity as under Diocletian (303), just
on the eve of the conversion of Constantine. The largest roster of names of martyrs comes to us
from this period. It was as if the Church were revealing, for the last time before its victory, all the
strength, beauty, and inspiration of the courageous suffering by which it had survived the first
centuries — the strength of its witness to the kingdom of Christ, by which alone it ultimately
conquered.

2. The Triumph Of Christianity.

Conversion of Constantine.
The conversion of the Emperor Constantine resulted in the greatest change that the
Church had ever undergone. Its significance was by no means limited to the altered relations be-
tween Church and state — the external conditions of Church life. Far more important were the
developments in the mind of Christianity itself, the profound internal transformation that took
place gradually in the Church community. This process was so complex and many-sided that one
must treat with caution the contradictory evaluations of the age of Constantine, indiscriminate
condemnation as well as unconditional justification.

33
In proportion as the struggle between the empire and Christianity was, as we have seen,
fated and inevitable, just so, inversely, the peace between them was a matter primarily of a single
person, a single will, and a single initiative. No one denies that Constantine played this role, but
the evaluations of it have been diametrically opposed. For Eastern Christianity, Constantine still
remains the holy initiator of the Christian world, the instrument for the victory of light over
darkness that crowned the heroic feats of the martyrs. The West, on the other hand, often regards
the era of Constantine as the beginning of an enslavement of the Church by the state, or even as
the first falling away on the part of the Church from the height of primitive Christian freedom. It
is essential to examine, at least briefly, this long-standing dispute.
In the liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church, the conversion of Constantine is compared
to that of Paul — “like Paul, he received a call not from men.”
2
But the historian must imme-
diately note the radical distinction between them. What Paul experienced on the road to Damas-
cus was a real and profound crisis, a “transvaluation of all values.” Between the old and the new
lay an impenetrable line, which changed everything in the apostle‟s life and psychology. This
was not true of Constantine. However, it was not by chance that his conversion occurred at the
most critical point in his political and imperial career. It was not a matter of political calculation
or “Machiavellianism,” as some historians have asserted; yet neither was it a transformation of
personality, as it had been for Paul. The explanation of Constantine‟s conversion must be sought
in his psychology and religious and political ideology, which alone will furnish clues for an un-
derstanding of his place in Christian history.
In Constantine‟s time the evolution of the Roman Empire, which began with its first con-
tact with the Hellenistic East, reached completion. It had attained its ultimate territorial limits,
which had already under Hadrian begun to shrink and were now to waver, shrink further, or di-
vide, according to the pressure of peoples and personalities in the coming centuries — only to
recombine or expand once more, and then again divide or contract. Politically, the same final de-
velopment had been attained. The Roman principality had gradually become a theocratic mo-
narchy, the emperor being the connecting link between God and the world, while the state was
the earthly reflection of divine law. The cult of the invincible Sun, which Emperor Aurelian had
made the imperial religion in the middle of the third century, was by now closely connected with
the new religious view of monarchy. The emperor in the world was the same as the sun in hea-
ven; he was a participant in its glorious nature and its representative on earth. The monarch stood
apart from simple mortals; he was “consecrated,” and therefore all that surrounded him was con-
secrated. The religious devotion tendered to him, the imperial liturgy, and the sacred ritual that
surrounded his whole life symbolized the divine nature of the state and the heavenly system re-
flected in the world. This evolution of attitude toward the state corresponded to the religious
movement of the Greco-Roman world toward belief in a single God; each inspired the other. The
Neoplatonism of Plotinus, the swan song of Greek philosophy, the Eastern cults and hermetic
scriptures — all the main spiritual and intellectual currents of the period proclaimed one source,
one supreme God in heaven.
Constantine was a typical representative of this new religious state of mind. According to
his first Christian biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea, his father had already “dedicated to the One
God his children, his wife, his servants, and his whole palace.” Constantine grew up in the at-
mosphere of this exalted heavenly religion, purged of coarse paganism. He had always had mys-
tical interests, a faith in dreams, visions, and illuminations. He firmly believed in his election,

2
From a liturgical hymn on the Feast of St. Constantine.

34
and his whole political career was marked by his personal contacts with heaven. Such a state of
mind does not wholly explain his conversion to Christianity, but it helps us to understand better
how Constantine himself received Christianity and how he became the representative of a new
approach to the Church and its faith.
Constantine‟s star began to rise on the political horizon of the empire over the devastation
and civil wars of several quarreling emperors who succeeded after Diocletian‟s abdication. The
latter had inaugurated rule by two emperors, both called “Augustus,” and two subordinate “Cae-
sars” — each with his own functions — himself as senior emperor keeping supreme authority.
This scheme for dealing with the besetting problems of empire did not work well, but the divi-
sion of East and West between two rulers within the Roman framework was the prevailing pat-
tern when Constantine came to power. Though he had been crowned at York, Britain, in 306 as
the chosen successor of his father (who briefly followed Diocletian), it was several years before
he could make himself secure. As emperor of the West, he was obliged to destroy his rival, Max-
entius, who had become established in Rome, in order to unify the western half of the empire
under his rule. Early in 312 he moved out of Gaul and in October approached the Eternal City
with a small army after a bold winter march across the Alps. The ensuing battle was a matter of
life and death for him, and involved the eventual success or the failure of his whole “mission,” of
which he was acutely aware. He had dared to march against the City. But was it not defended by
all its venerable gods — all the force of tradition, all the glory of the past — as well as by Max-
entius? For a man like Constantine this struggle for the ancient city may well have meant a sacri-
legious break with the past, and he may have been unconsciously seeking some new force or
sanction, which would bolster him in his plan to revive Rome.
It was at this time of terrible tension and doubt that his conversion occurred. The descrip-
tions of the event closest to it in time mention no vision of the Cross nor the traditional words,
“In this sign conquer.” They say merely that he was led in a dream to have a new sign inscribed
on his weapons. This done, he conquered Maxentius and entered Rome. Later the basic narrative
began to grow into a legend, not without the help of Constantine himself. One point is beyond
question: the sign he saw and under which he won his decisive victory was in his own mind a
Christian symbol, and from that time on he counted himself a Christian.
Did he actually become one? Not until his deathbed, twenty-five years after the battle of
the Milvian Bridge, did he receive baptism, the only symbol the Church accepts of becoming a
Christian. (It had been his dream to be baptized in the Jordan, perhaps a reason for his long post-
ponement). Then what had he been before? The answer to this question reveals the fundamental
paradox in Byzantinism, already fully present in the unique conversion of the first Christian em-
peror. In Constantine‟s mind the Christian faith, or rather, faith in Christ, had not come to him
through the Church, but had been bestowed personally and directly for his victory over the ene-
my — in other words, as he was fulfilling his imperial duty. Consequently the victory he had
won with the help of the Christian God had placed the emperor — and thereby the empire as well
— under the protection of the Cross and in direct dependence upon Christ.
This also meant, however, that Constantine was converted, not as a man, but as an empe-
ror. Christ Himself had sanctioned his power and made him His intended representative, and
through Constantine‟s person He bound the empire to Himself by special bonds. Here lies the
explanation of the striking fact that the conversion of Constantine was not followed by any re-
view or re-evaluation of the theocratic conception of empire, but on the contrary convinced
Christians and the Church itself of the emperor‟s divine election and obliged them to regard the
empire itself as a consecrated kingdom, chosen by God. All the difficulties and distinctive quali-

35
ties of Byzantium, all the ambiguity of the “age of Constantine” in Church history, result from
the primary, initial paradox that the first Christian emperor was a Christian outside the Church,
and the Church silently but with full sincerity and faith accepted and recognized him. In the per-
son of the emperor, the empire became Christian without passing through the crisis of the bap-
tismal trial.

Relations between Church and State.
After Constantine‟s conversion came the so-called Edict of Milan in 313, defining the
principles of his religious policies. It solemnly proclaimed freedom “for Christians and all others
to follow whatever religion they wished,” and the properties confiscated from Christian churches
during the persecutions were returned to them.
The decision of Milan has been sharply disputed by historians. What did this religious
freedom mean? If Constantine, in proclaiming it, had been inspired by the Christian idea that
one‟s religious convictions should be independent of the state, then why was it enforced for so
short a time and then replaced by the unlimited and obligatory monopoly of Christianity, which
destroyed all religious freedom?
This ambiguity was apparent almost immediately in the schism of the Donatists in Africa.
At the time of Constantine‟s conversion, rebellion had spread in the African Church. After the
waves of persecution the atmosphere had become poisoned by suspicion, accusations of decep-
tion, and defections. A party of Carthaginian Christians refused to recognize the new bishop,
Caecilian, because a certain Bishop Felix, accused of betrayal in surrendering copies of the
Scriptures to the police, had taken part in his ordination. This group, supported by many neigh-
boring bishops, had chosen as their bishop first Majorinus and later Donatus, from whom the sect
received its name.
Just at this time Constantine was sending generous grants to the Christian communities
which had suffered under the persecutions. In Africa his aid naturally went to the “catholics” led
by Caecilian. This aroused the Donatists to appeal to the emperor to transfer their case to the
judgment of the Gallic bishops, who had not undergone persecution and therefore could not be
accused of being compromised. Constantine valued nothing higher than peace, and what at-
tracted him most of all in Christianity was, perhaps, its catholicity, the universal unity of the
Church. Wishing to pacify the African Church, he agreed to the request of the Donatists. The
chief bishops of Gaul gathered in Rome under the presidency of Pope Miltiades, listened to both
sides, and solemnly confirmed the verdict of the synod of Carthage.
The matter had apparently been settled in accordance with all Church rules, as the Donat-
ists themselves had wished. But they appealed again to the emperor, and Constantine then took
an irrevocable step, inaugurating the tragic misunderstanding between the theocratic empire and
the Church, which was to last for many centuries. Instead of simply referring to the decision of
the Church, which had been taken independently of him, the unbaptized emperor fulfilled the
request of the Donatists and ordered a new investigation.
This was the first blow to the independence of the Church, and the distinction between it
and the state became obscured. Later developments in the Donatist rebellion resulted solely from
this first fatal mistake. There was a new condemnation of the schism by the Great Synod at
Aries, then a new appeal to the emperor. Constantine grew angry — ”What madness to plead for
judgment from a man who himself awaits the judgment of Christ!” — but again yielded. When
he was finally convinced, after so many investigations, that the Donatists were in the wrong, he
let loose the full blast of state persecution upon them — the last and most terrible of his errors in

36
the matter. Persecution, which transformed the schismatics into martyrs, only strengthened them.
Fire raged throughout Africa and nothing could extinguish it. The Donatist schism, even more
than the invasion of the Vandals, was the beginning of the end for the great and glorious African
Church.
To the question posed earlier as to the historical meaning of the Edict of Milan, which so
briefly suggested a genuine religious freedom, there can be only one answer: Constantine‟s free-
dom was not the same as Christian freedom. It would be centuries before the new concept of the
individual, stemming from the Gospels, resulted in a new concept of the state, limited by the in-
dividual‟s inviolable rights. We now know how tortuous the development was; we know too,
alas, that Christians themselves have not always been the bearers of genuinely Christian evangel-
ical truth. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our recent history is the fact that the most Christian of
all ideas in our world, that of the absolute value of human personality, has been raised and de-
fended historically in opposition to the Church community and has become a powerful symbol of
the struggle against the Church.
The origin of this tragedy lies in the Church‟s own beginnings, when the Christian mind
was bewitched by the conversion of Constantine. Not only did this prevent the Church from re-
vising the theocratic absolutism of the ancient state in terms of the Gospel, but on the contrary,
that absolutism itself became an inseparable part of the Christian world view. Constantine be-
lieved in the state as the “bearer” of religion because it directly reflected and expressed the di-
vine will for the world in human society; only in the light of this theocratic conception can the
freedom proclaimed in the Edict of Milan be correctly evaluated. It was freedom for the cult, for
the outward forms of the worship of God; the state was no longer exclusively affiliated with any
particular form. This did not mean that the state had become religiously neutral, but rather that
the new religious and philosophical monotheism which Constantine had represented before his
conversion regarded all exterior forms of religion — the cults of all gods — as more or less
closely approaching the single highest deity, and in the long run saw everything as relative.
From this point of view the Edict of Milan was not a beginning but an end. It was the last
expression of the religious syncretism in which ancient paganism was to dissolve and die. Yet
the theocratic nature of the state remained untouched; religion was primarily a state matter, be-
cause the state itself was a divine establishment, a divine form of human society. Freedom was
granted so that, in the of the edict, “the divinity abiding in the heavens might be mercifully and
favorably inclined toward us, and to all who are under our authority.”
Although this freedom must be regarded as the last manifestation of imperial syncretism,
the Edict of Milan reveals something new that was to follow. The emperor did not conceal his
special sympathy for Christianity, and declared openly that he was granting freedom to non-
Christians “for the peace of our time,” although his heart belonged wholly to the new faith. This
was freedom for the transitional period, in expectation of the painless triumph of Christianity.
Paganism was already doomed to ruin and persecution by the theocratic nature of the empire and
by the persisting pagan concept of the state. Constantine considered himself the religious lawgiv-
er of the empire, and as a Christian he could not combine Christianity with pagan falsehood. The
more he became aware of his Christianity, the more obvious became his hostility to paganism.
Two logics, two faiths, the theocratic and the Christian, were interwoven in this ambiguous un-
ion, which was to define the fate of the Church in newborn Byzantium.
Donatism was only an introductory chapter in the history of the new relations between
Church and state, whose significance was to be revealed far more fully and tragically in the
Arian controversy that took up the whole first century of the age of Constantine.

37

The Arian Disturbance.
In the Arian quarrel, a large number of threads were gathered in a single knot, with many
problems drawn into it. This marked the start of the great theological disputes, which were to
persist through almost five centuries of Church history, leaving as a heritage the inspired writ-
ings of the Fathers and teachers and the crystallized formulas of the ecumenical councils. This
struggle to attain the truth, however, was immediately complicated by the involvement of state
power. It ceased to be a purely ecclesiastical matter and acquired a new, political dimension. In
the course of the controversy the faith of the Church was crystallized, and the gradual and pain-
ful birth of Christian Byzantium took place as well. Although the fourth century was outwardly
one of the most tragic in the history of the Church, it was at this time that the vision of a Chris-
tian world was born which, despite all the problems it posed, was never to be erased from the
mind of the Church.
The dispute began in Alexandria, the capital of Christian thought. Arius, a scholarly
Alexandrian presbyter and preacher, began to teach that Christ, as the Son of God and one of
God‟s creations, must necessarily be recognized as created in time, since His birth could take
place only in time. He had been born of God as an instrument for the creation of the world, and
therefore “there was a time when He was not.” Consequently the Son of God was wholly distinct
from the Father and not equal to Him.
For the rank and file of modern Church members it is difficult to understand, first, how
such a doctrine, which obviously contradicted the most basic principles of Christianity, could
arise; and second, how the dispute could have had so many after-effects, rending the Church
asunder for a space of fifty years. To understand it, we must realize that for Christians of that
time theology was indeed “a matter of life and death, a heroic spiritual feat, a confession of faith
and a positive solution to the problems of life.”
3
In disputes centered apparently upon words and
definitions, the participants were in fact defending and protecting the vital significance of Chris-
tianity — what today we might call the existential aspect implied in the term “salvation.” Salva-
tion is not a magical act taking place outwardly; it depends on how wholeheartedly man accepts
and absorbs the divine gift. Theology, then, which signifies comprehension, expression, and con-
fession of the truth in words, becomes the highest calling of man. It restores man‟s participation
in the divine meaning; it is his rightful heritage as a rational being. Theology is the expression of
faith in rational terms; not its subordination to reason, but the extension, rather, of reason itself to
the dimensions of revelation.
The Church had lived from the beginning by faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit —
in the experience of the Triune God. The meaning of the Gospels lies in the revelation of the Tri-
nity as perfect unity, love, and life. “The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God, the Fa-
ther, the communion of the Holy Spirit” is the liturgical blessing we encounter in St. Paul‟s let-
ter. But if the source of salvation and the strength of Christian life lies in this revelation of the
Triune God, then the revelation should also enlighten human reason and enable it to penetrate the
mystery revealed by Christ. The acceptance of truth has always meant effort, crisis, and growth.
“Natural” reason conflicts with revelation as in a contradiction or paradox. How can the primi-
tive faith of the Church in a Triune God be reconciled with the equally unquestionable affirma-
tion of His unity, the monotheism that led Christians to follow the Jews in repudiating all pagan-
ism? This faith must be revealed and the experience explained. So the theological question of the

38
Trinity, fundamental in its nature and chronologically the first to arise, troubled the mind of the
Church.
Even in the second century the Apologists, defenders of the Christian faith to the empire
and the public, had tried to explain faith in the Trinity by basing it on the concept of the Logos
familiar to Greek philosophers. The Son of God, Christ, is the Word of the Father, by which He
creates and saves the world, and by which He is linked to the world. In the “Word” we in turn
recognize God and join ourselves to Him. But the danger of such an explanation is that the con-
cept of the Logos in Greek philosophy has what might be called an instrumental nature. The Lo-
gos was always the bond, the intermediary link, the unifying principle; it was not an independent
source existing by itself. Although in the Fourth Gospel the Word is understood in the spirit and
light of the Old Testament as the living and acting God, it might in the Greek conception easily
be taken to be some divine quality or force given to the man Jesus, which distinguished Him
from the rest of mankind. In other words, the concept of the Logos, which was common to Chris-
tianity and Hellenism, still had to be purified of its exclusively cosmological significance in
Greek philosophy. The Apologists of the second century, however, lacked the words and the phi-
losophical gift to do this. Their writings are ambiguous and inconsistent. While, they were whol-
ly orthodox for the Church, which read them in terms of its own faith, they could be understood
by outsiders as identifying the Father with the Word in the way that a man might be identified
with his reason or his thought.
At the beginning of the third century a movement called Monarchianism had arisen, again
in the West. This was a doctrine of the Trinity, which defended the “monarchy” of the Father. It
reflected the fear of retreating from the position of radical monotheism and a confused concep-
tion of the faith of the Church as being faith in three gods. The Monarchians taught that only the
Father was God; in their teachings about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit they split into two
groups — one which taught that Christ was a man on whom the divine force had descended,
making Him the Son of God and uniting Him with the Father in a unique way; while the second
taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three different modes of the appearance of the One
God in the world. First He revealed Himself as the Father, then as the Son, and finally as the Ho-
ly Spirit. The latter doctrine was called Modalism, and its chief representative, the scholarly Ro-
man presbyter Sabellius, was expelled from the Church under Pope Callistus (217-22).
Out of the struggle against these heresies come the first attempts to give an orthodox de-
scription of the mystery of the Trinity and to express it in human terms. In the West there was the
theology of Tertullian before he retreated into Montanism, and in the East that of Origen. Despite
the great difference between them, both had a common inadequacy: they identified God only
with the Father, the view that had led to Monarchianism. The Trinity “arises,” “becomes,” if not
in time, in any case hierarchically; it is a “disclosure” of God the Father — although according to
the experience of the Church it is precisely the triune quality of God that is His complete form —
the mystery of the Three who have one life in perfect love.
Thought had not yet caught up with faith, and words were helpless to express experience.
Faith comes before theology, and only for that reason may we speak of theological development
as the gradual acceptance, discovery, and refinement of faith, which has been complete from the
start. From the examples of Origen and Tertullian we may see that the first attempts at this dis-
covery were incomplete, even heretical. It was difficult to find words to express the faith, and
centuries would be required to remake thought itself in the spirit of Christianity.
Such was the situation at the beginning of the fourth century, when Arianism first ap-
peared. For lack of words, thought broke away, drawing faith after it and distorting the most ba-

39
sic and vital truths of the New Testament revelation. In this sense Arianism, as it slowly and
painfully worked itself out, marked the end of all these confusions, for it was to enable the
Church at last to express its faith in the Trinity in words “proper to God.”
Arius was mistaken in his view, for he approached the solution to the theological problem
of the Trinity solely as a philosopher and weighed the whole problem by logic. He interpreted
two basic and particularly vital truths of Christianity, that of the One God and that of the salva-
tion of the world by the Son of God, as abstract principles. He was a convinced monotheist, not
in the Old Testament sense, but in the spirit of the philosophical monotheism, which predomi-
nated at that period in the Hellenistic world. This meant recognition of some abstract One or Ent-
ity, which lay at the base of all that existed, as its source and as the unifying principle of all mul-
tiplicity. God was One, and there could not be any multiplicity in him; if He had a Son, then the
Son was already distinct from Him. The Son was not He and not God. The Son was born, and
birth is the appearance of something which has not been before. The Son was born for creation,
for salvation, but He was not God in that unique and absolute sense which we use when we call
the Father God.
Arianism was a rationalization of Christianity. Here living religious experience was no
longer fertilizing thought, forcing it to see and understand what it had not previously understood.
On the contrary, here faith was dried out by logical analysis and distorted into an abstract con-
struction. Arianism was in tune with the times in its strict monotheism and desire to prune out
everything irrational and incomprehensible. It was more accessible to the average mind seeking a
“rational” faith than were the biblical images and expressions of Church tradition. As one histo-
rian has noted, it deprived Christianity of its living religious content and distorted it into an ab-
stract theism of cosmology and morality.
The first reaction to Arianism was that of active believers who were horrified by this dis-
tortion of the sacred principles of the Church. Arius was censured by his own bishop, Alexander
of Alexandria; but this was only a censure, not an answer. In his rebuke Alexander himself went
astray, unable to find adequate words. Arius appealed for support to his former friends from the
school of the famous Antiochene theologian, Lucian. As educated theologians, many of them
occupied episcopal chairs. Especially noteworthy were Eusebius of Caesarea, whose Ecclesias-
tical History is a chief source of our knowledge of the early Church, and Eusebius of Nicomedia,
who was to baptize the Emperor Constantine at the time of his death.
These friends supported Arius, and not only for personal reasons. In these years there
arose within the Church an intellectual class eager for rational explanations of the faith, which
was beginning to be somewhat embarrassed by the insufficiently philosophical nature of Church
doctrine. The Arian heresy seemed to them completely suitable as a “modern” interpretation of
it, one, which would be acceptable to broad circles of educated people. In this way the local
Alexandrian dispute gradually spread throughout the East.
At this point the Emperor Constantine intervened. We must imagine what the conversion
of the emperor himself meant for the Church after three centuries of persecution, if we are to un-
derstand why his court had immediately become a center of attraction, not only for opportunists
and careerists, but for those genuinely inspired by the victory of Christ who dreamed of extend-
ing it throughout the world. Emperor and empire were becoming providential instruments for the
kingdom of Christ. Around Constantine there sprang up a group of Christian counselors, a sort of
unofficial staff. A prominent place among them was taken very early, as soon as Constantine
came to the East, by Eusebius of Nicomedia, first of an unfortunate series of court bishops. Con-

40
stantine himself could not, of course, understand the essence of the theological dispute, but he
was disturbed by this new dissension within the Church.

Council of Nicaea — First Ecumenical Council.
These were the years of Constantine‟s triumph. His victory over Licinius in 323 had fi-
nally confirmed his supreme power, and he pictured a united empire, spiritually renewed by a
united Church. Suddenly, instead of his dream there was sad reality: new disputes and divisions.
In all likelihood his Christian counselors gave him the idea of summoning a council of bishops,
the customary means used by the Church to settle controversy. Constantine wanted to make of
this council the symbol and crown of his own victory and of the new position of the Church in
the empire. And so the first ecumenical council was summoned at Nicaea in the spring of the
year 325. It was universal, not in the number of bishops attending (tradition defines it as the
council of the 318 Fathers), but in its conception and significance. For the first time, after centu-
ries of semi-subterranean existence, prelates gathered from all parts of the Church, many still
with the marks of wounds and mutilations received under Diocletian. The unprecedented magni-
ficence of their reception and the hospitality and kindness of the emperor confirmed their joyous
assurance that a new era had begun and that Christ was indeed victorious over the world. Con-
stantine himself was the first to interpret the council in this way. He had designated it for the
twentieth anniversary of his reign and wanted a gala occasion and rejoicing; as he said in his
speech to the assembled bishops on the opening day, disputes were “more dangerous than war
and other conflicts; they bring me more grief than anything else.”
The importance of the Council of Nicaea lies, of course, first of all in the great victory the
truth sustained there. It left no records or “Acts,” as the other ecumenical councils have done; we
know only that it condemned Arianism and inserted in the traditional baptismal symbol of the
faith a new precise definition of the relationship of the Son to the Father, by calling the Son
“consubstantial” (homoousion) with the Father, and consequently equal to Him in divinity. This
term was so precise as to exclude any possibility of reinterpretation. Arianism was uncondition-
ally condemned.
But the new definition, too, was to be for many long years a stumbling block and a temp-
tation, and it plunged the Church into yet another lengthy dispute, which took up the next half-
century. Hardly any other fifty-year period in the history of the Church has had such significance
in defining its future. The immediate reason for the controversy was that the condemned Arians
not only did not surrender, but by means of very complex intrigues were able to bring the gov-
ernment authorities over to their side. The participation of the emperor in the life of the Church
was a chief element in this new struggle, and one must say from the start that the events of the
fourth century from this point of view were more than destructive — they were truly tragic.
The temporary triumph of the Arians would have been impossible even with the help of
the emperor if the Church, which had condemned Arms almost unanimously, had remained unit-
ed both in its condemnation and in accepting the constructive doctrine of Nicaea. But Nicaea had
introduced confusion and doubt into men‟s minds. Most of its participants easily accepted the
condemnation of Arianism, which too obviously distorted the original tradition; but the construc-
tive doctrine about the Trinity contained in the term homoousion (“of one substance”) was a dif-
ferent matter. This term had been proposed and in fact thrust upon Constantine, and through him
upon the Council, by a small group of bold and far-sighted theologians who understood the in-
adequacy of merely condemning Arius and the need to crystallize Church tradition in a clear
concept. For most of the bishops, however, the word was incomprehensible. For the first time a

41
creedal definition had been made to contain a term alien to the Scripture. Even the meaning was
dubious; would not this “one in substance” bring back into the Church the temptation of Sabel-
lianism, so recently overcome? Did it not merge Father and Son again in “one essence”? Still, the
council at Constantine‟s request had dignified it as a symbol of faith without probing much into
its ramifications of meaning. The bishops considered it their main work to condemn heresy; as
for the symbol of faith, in practice every Church had its own, which was in essential — but not
necessarily literal — agreement with all the others.
The council had seemed to end successfully, except for the mistake of Constantine, who
repeated his action against the Donatists by exiling Arius and his followers, thus again confusing
the judgment of the Church with that of Caesar. At this point the group of court bishops began to
exert its influence. It consisted almost wholly of friends of Arms, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia.
They had accepted the condemnation, since nearly all the bishops had shown themselves against
him at the council; but with reluctance and with hope of revenge. Since they could not openly
oppose the council, they resorted to intrigue, and taking advantage of the general indifference of
the bishops to the constructive Nicene definition, began to minimize it and to direct their forces
against the group of theologians who alone understood its full significance.
Rumors and accusations were set in motion having nothing to do with theology. The first
victim was Eustathius of Antioch, whose reputation with the emperor they succeeded in blacken-
ing and who was sent into exile. They then turned their intrigues against young Athanasius, re-
cently elected bishop of Alexandria and probably the moving spirit in the creation of the new
term. Again without engaging in theological dispute, his enemies first succeeded in having him
condemned for alleged canonical wrongdoing by the episcopal council at Tyre in 331, and later
in having him exiled by the emperor to Trier on the Rhine. Constantine could not bear rebels,
and they contrived to present him to the emperor as such. After this there was no difficulty in
bringing back Arius himself; he signed a questionable repentance and was received into commu-
nion. Constantine, who had never understood what the dispute was about, thought all was well
— that the Church had restored peace within itself and that only enemies of peace could now
rake up the past. Opportunists triumphed everywhere, while the Church as a whole was obvious-
ly uncomprehending and silent.
But Constantine‟s days were drawing to an end. In 336, the same year that Athanasius
was sent into exile, he celebrated the thirtieth and last jubilee of his reign. He was already a dif-
ferent man. His mystical tendency had grown with the years; toward the end even matters of
state withdrew into the background of his interest. The speeches and celebrations of the jubilee
were illuminated by the light burning ever more strongly in his soul. Shortly before his death,
through the laying on of hands, he became a communicant. He no longer put on imperial robes.
His dream of baptism in the Jordan was not to be, but he was baptized by Eusebius of Nicome-
dia, and the joyous certainty of the nearness of Christ and His eternal light never again left him.
The Emperor Constantine died on a sunny noon of Pentecost in the year 337. However
many mistakes and perhaps even crimes there may have been in his life — such as the murder of
his son Crispus, a dark family drama never finally solved — it is hard to doubt that this man had
striven unwaveringly toward God, had lived with a thirst for the absolute, and had wished to es-
tablish a semblance of heavenly truth and beauty on earth. The greatest earthly hope of the
Church, the dream of the triumph of Christ in the world, became associated with his name. The
love and gratitude of the Church is stronger than the pitiless but fickle and frequently superficial
judgment of historians.

42
After Constantine.
Only after the emperor‟s death did the Arian dispute begin to reveal its full significance.
Constantine was succeeded by three sons, Constantine II, Constans, and Constantius, among
whom the empire was divided. The usual strife of succession destroyed the first two in 340 and
350, respectively, leaving Constantius sole ruler. He was to play a fateful role in the life of the
Church. While his father had connected his position as an “outside bishop of the Church” with
his conversion and immediate election by Christ, Constantius interpreted his power over the
Church as self-evident. The ambiguity of the age of Constantine was beginning to bring forth its
first poisoned fruit. Although the late emperor could make mistakes and frequently did, he was a
great man with a genuine desire for justice. Constantius, on the other hand, though partial to
Christianity, was a small man and immediately sought the support of a group of shameless flat-
terers and opportunists who clung to him.
At first, it is true, the Eusebians had to give way. Constantine II demanded that all the
exiled bishops be returned to their thrones. Athanasius, who had never recognized his dethrone-
ment and had been supported by the Western churches, was met with love by the people of Alex-
andria. But the Eusebians had a strong weapon against him: he had been deposed by a council of
bishops, and only a council could restore him. The overwhelming majority of bishops had abso-
lutely no notion of the ideological dimension underlying the whole struggle against the Alexan-
drian “pope.” He seemed to them a restless person and had, moreover, been canonically deth-
roned. In the winter of 337-38 in Antioch, the center of Eusebian intrigues, an epistle was com-
posed to the emperors and to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, accusing him of returning
illegally to his throne.
Athanasius replied through a council of sixty-two Egyptian bishops, and appealed as well
to the judgment of the whole Church. The epistle of the Egyptian council demonstrated that he
was innocent of the absurd accusations raised against him and pointed out the real significance of
the whole affair, the desire of his enemies “to abolish the orthodox and do away with the con-
demnation of the Arians at the true and great council.” Here for the first time we note alarm at
the intervention of the emperor in Church affairs. “By what right were the bishops who con-
demned Athanasius summoned by an order of the Emperor?”
But the Egyptian bishops were late in remembering that external authority had no rights
within the Church. What about Nicaea itself? In any case the question was now transferred to its
true theological battleground, and the West, hitherto silent through ignorance of Eastern matters,
became involved. The Eusebians had to get rid of Athanasius immediately and used all their in-
fluence on Constantius. They chose their own bishop of Alexandria, a certain Gregory of Cappa-
docia, and demanded that the emperor help him take the Church of Alexandria away from the
deposed and condemned Athanasius. From this moment there was open alliance between Con-
stantius and the Eusebians. The prefect of Egypt, a friend of Arius, was ordered to give Gregory
all possible help. On hearing that Gregory was approaching the city, the people rushed into the
churches to defend them from the heretic. Police intervened and outrages developed, with
churches being emptied by armed force. The police sought Athanasius, but he succeeded in hid-
ing. In March 339 Gregory solemnly entered Alexandria, where a persecution of the supporters
of Athanasius began. The Eusebians had triumphed once more.
Athanasius, however, was not a man to give in to force. He possessed great energy and
absolute faith in the righteousness of his cause, and the ordeals, which the great Alexandrian Fa-
ther and teacher underwent all his life long apparently added to his strength. A truly epic struggle
began between this giant and all the forces combined against him. From a hiding place some-

43
where near Alexandria, he sent his famous and explosive Encyclical Letter, which was a cry for
help. “What has passed among us exceeds all the persecutions in bitterness. . . . The whole
church has been raped, the priesthood profaned, and still worse, piety is persecuted by impiety. . .
. Let every man help us, as if each were affected out of fear of seeing the Church canons and the
faith of the Church held in scorn.”
Shortly after this we find Athanasius in Rome, where other victims of the Eusebian terror
were gradually gathering. Until this time the West had taken no part in the post-Nicene dispute;
the term homoousion had been accepted without argument or doubt, and only now, belatedly, did
they learn from Athanasius and his friends of the difficulties in the East. The situation became as
complex as it was tragic when Pope Julius gave his defense of Nicaea and Athanasius such a
Roman tinge that the East inevitably united to oppose it.

The Roman Position.
Already by the end of the second century we have seen the gradual development in the
West of a Roman self-consciousness. The Roman Church was the most ancient Western Church
and the only Western apostolic see, consecrated by the names and blood of the apostles Peter and
Paul. Christianity in the West developed from Rome, so that most of the Western churches re-
garded the Roman Church as the Mother Church, from which they had received the tradition of
the faith and apostolic succession. While Rome‟s position in the West was exceptional, the
Church of St. Peter was the object of special respect in the East as well, so that Ignatius of Anti-
och referred to it as “presiding in love.” After the fall of the apostolic community in Jerusalem,
Rome undoubtedly became the first Church, the center of that universal unity and consent which
Irenaeus of Lyons contrasted with the splintered Gnostic sects.
But alarming signs appeared very early: the Roman bishops were more and more inclined
to regard their primacy, which no one disputed, as a special power, and their “presiding in love”
as presiding in power and authority. Thus in 190-192, Pope Victor demanded in an ultimatum
that the Eastern churches accept the Roman practice of celebrating Easter. Rome held this cele-
bration on the first Sunday after the Jewish Passover, while in the East it coincided with the Jew-
ish holiday. Victor based his demand on the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul. He was
answered by one of the senior bishops of the East, Polycrates of Ephesus, who referred in turn to
a tradition that had reached him directly from the apostles. That is, he simply repudiated the Ro-
man claim to force its practice on other churches. “I have lived in the Lord sixty-five years, I
have read all the Holy Scriptures, and I fear nothing, whatever might threaten me. Greater men
than Victor have said: It is better to listen to God than men.” In reply Victor in an encyclical let-
ter simply excluded the churches of Asia Minor from communion with Rome, and this decisive
measure evoked protests even in places where the Roman practice, not the Eastern, prevailed.
Later, in the middle of the third century, a dispute arose between Rome and Africa over
the question of the baptism of heretics. Pope Stephen also required unconditional submission to
the Roman decision. The African bishops through Cyprian of Carthage answered: “None of us
claims to be a bishop of bishops or resorts to tyranny to obtain the consent of his brethren. Each
bishop in the fullness of his freedom and his authority retains the right to think for himself, he is
not subject to any other and he does not judge others.” Stephen was answered still more sharply
by Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, one of the pillars of the Eastern Church: “There are
many distinctions within the Church, but what is important is spiritual unity, unity of faith and
tradition. What boldness to claim to be the judge of all! Stephen by this claim excludes himself
from the universal unity of the episcopate.”

44
Thus very early we see both acknowledgment of the universal significance of Rome as
the first Church to express the common consent and the common unity, but also a reaction
against a specifically Roman interpretation of this significance. In each case, however, the reac-
tion was merely to a concrete situation and never to the matter of the Roman claims in their es-
sence. Thus a Roman tradition was gradually allowed to develop. When East and West later
came to face it, it was too late; for Rome the tradition was already sanctified by antiquity and
interpreted as true.
The Arian dispute was an important step in the history of this gradual divergence. Atha-
nasius appealed to Rome because he had no one left to appeal to in the East. The Eusebians
wrote to Rome to make their condemnation of Athanasius universal. Both appeals were in accor-
dance with the concept of the universal unity of the Church as a universal communion, a unity of
life such as we have already observed in the second and third centuries. But Pope Julius inter-
preted them in his own way, in the light of the gradually developing, specifically Roman tradi-
tion. He conceived his role as that of an arbitrator of Eastern matters, and wrote the East de-
manding that the whole problem be decided at a council in Rome — even appointing the date of
the council. It was almost an ultimatum.
In Antioch the pope‟s letter caused dismay. One must not forget that, at this time, for the
overwhelming majority of Eastern bishops the problem was Athanasius, not the Nicene faith.
Athanasius, to their minds, had been deposed by a legitimate council and a review of this deci-
sion, not in the East but in Rome, seemed an unprecedented defiance of all the canonical norms
accepted by the Church from ancient times. The Eusebian leaders began to play on this dismay.
Only a year after receiving the papal epistle, in January 341 an answer came to Rome signed by
Eusebius of Nicomedia (who by this time had managed to transfer across the Propontis to the
new Eastern capital, Constantinople) and by two other senior Eastern bishops. In it the pope was
respectfully but somewhat ironically put in his place. It should be noted that Julius had put him-
self in a difficult position by accepting into communion, along with Athanasius, Marcellus of
Ancyra. The latter really did interpret the Nicene definition incorrectly, with clearly Sabellian
overtones. He had undoubtedly been rightly condemned in the East. But theological refinements
were poorly understood in the West, and Nicaea had been accepted in a purely formal way. They
saw in Marcellus only a martyr to the truth. Meanwhile, from the East Julius was offered a
choice between two condemned fugitives and the whole Eastern Church, which was united in
condemning them.
On receiving this answer, Julius immediately summoned a council of Italian bishops in
Rome, where he solemnly proclaimed his agreement with Athanasius and Marcellus. In a new
epistle to the Eastern bishops, he expressed the Roman point of view in plain terms: “Do you not
know that the custom is that we should be written to first, and that judgment is rendered here?
What I write you and what I say we received from the blessed Apostle Peter.” Julius was com-
pletely sincere, as well as morally superior to the Eusebians. The Catholic West rightly took
pride in his dignified epistle. But there is irony in the fact that, in defending the truth, he really
did break with the tradition of the Eastern Church and in effect forced it to unite against him;
while in its opposition it was at the same time repudiating Athanasius and the Nicene faith and
defending the original concept of the Church, which it was not to reject even when it finally re-
turned both to Nicaea and to Athanasius.

45
Countermeasures in the East.
The East responded by holding a great council, which met in Antioch in the summer of
341 to dedicate the “Great Golden Church” that Constantine had not been able to finish before
his death. About a hundred bishops attended. Nothing shows better that Church history cannot be
reduced to black and white formulas than the fact that this council, which again condemned
Athanasius, has still remained in the tradition of the Eastern Church one of the authoritative “lo-
cal councils” and the canons it adopted are still included in the canonical collections.
The Council of Antioch of 341 was the breaking point in the Arian rebellion. The Euse-
bians wanted no theological disputes but simply the destruction of the defenders of homoousion.
But now it was necessary to answer the Western accusation of heresy in specifically theological
fashion. By returning to theology for the first time since Nicaea, the Eastern bishops started
down the road, which would bring them after decades of tormenting distortions to a deliberate
acceptance of that council‟s decisions.
In answer to the accusation of the pope, the Fathers at the council solemnly affirmed an
old pre-Nicene creed, which has been ascribed to Lucian of Antioch, in which faith in Jesus Chr-
ist is expressed in the following terms: “God of God, the Whole of the Whole, the One of the
One, the Perfect of the Perfect, the King of the King . . . Non-distinct image of the Divinity of
the Father, both of His Being and of His strength, will, and glory.” This was an antiquated form
of the pre-Nicene doctrine about the same homoousion (“consubstantiality”) in older verbal gar-
ments. Their agreement with homoousion was not apparent to the Antiochene Fathers, nor did
they perceive that only the Nicene definition expressed finally and with utmost precision what
they were describing in so many images: the perfect divinity of the Son and His perfect unity
with the Father. On the contrary, homoousion seemed to them an alien and dangerous term, and
they found confirmation of their fears in the heresy of Marcellus of Ancyra, who had returned to
the Sabellian confusion of the Son with the Father. Yet Rome had accepted Marcellus. Thus we
cannot speak of a struggle between the orthodox West and the heretical East. There were too
many factors on both sides of misunderstanding and incomprehension. Much had to be burned
away in the purifying fire of suffering and division.
The Council of Antioch seemed to make possible a theological agreement with the West.
But there remained the Problem of individuals — of Athanasius first of all. Under the pressure of
the Emperor Constans, still in power in the West, it was decided to review his case at an ecumen-
ical council in Sardica (Sofia). This council, in turn, had hardly convened in 343 when it imme-
diately split — again because the Westerners did not comprehend the complexities of the situa-
tion. The Easterners agreed to a general review of Athanasius‟ case, but before the review they
regarded him as deposed and insisted that he be absent during the discussion. The Westerners
refused to fulfill this condition, referring to Rome‟s justification of him. The Council split, and
the peace overtures that had been made were nullified.
Political pressure by Constans on his brother continued, and the military situation in the
East made Constantius particularly sensitive to it. Matters went so far that when Gregory of
Alexandria died in 345, Constantius, without ecclesiastical consultation, simply summoned
Athanasius to occupy his former post. Knowing to what he owed this summons, Athanasius de-
manded a written rescript, and since he had never recognized his deposition, returned. His return
was a triumph. Even his most violent enemies were reconciled by the fait accompli.
But the political wind very soon shifted again. In 353, after several civil wars, Constan-
tius emerged as sole ruler of the whole empire and immediately showed that his conciliatory atti-
tude had been due only to expediency. The Arians and semi-Arians were far more obedient to

46
state authority than the Nicaeans, and they became the support of Constantius. Nicaeans were
persecuted everywhere. Athanasius was not touched at first, for Constantius had appointed him
in a personal rescript. Both the emperor and his counselors understood that, while Athanasius
was defended in the West, his condemnation could not be universal. Therefore it was necessary
first to crush the West and bring it into submission to state authority. In 352 the deceased Pope
Julius was succeeded in Rome by Pope Liberius. The emperor demanded that he summon a
council and condemn Athanasius. The pope tried to defend himself, but without success. In 355
three hundred Western bishops in Milan, where Constantius‟ court was at the time, yielded to
brute force. “My will is the canon for you,” said the emperor when the bishops asked to investi-
gate the question canonically, and all except a few very steadfast ones signed the condemnation.
Those who resisted were immediately exiled. Liberius, who had refused to accept the decision of
the council, was also exiled. Imperial officials passed all through the West, collecting signatures
from bishops to make sure of their stand.
Thus forty years after the conversion of Constantine the Church lay prostrate at the feet
of his son. Only Athanasius remained, a living challenge to force and a witness to the indepen-
dence of the Church. On the night of February 8, 356, when he was presiding at a vigil, the
church was surrounded by soldiers. On the order of the bishop the people began to sing “Praise
the name of the Lord!” and started to disperse. Along with them, unnoticed in the darkness,
Athanasius also left, disappearing for six years. In vain the angry Constantius ordered all the
monasteries of Egypt searched; the desert and the monks hid their bishop. And immediately his
fulminating and accusing voice rang out. During his years in hiding he wrote his “Apology to
Constantius,” which was devastating for the emperor, and his “History of the Arians,” in which
he laid bare the whole theological dialectic of the post-Nicene dispute. In the face of triumphant
force, he alone remained undaunted.
Until this time no one had as yet openly opposed Nicaea, and the Arian minority had
been able to create the impression of unity among the Eastern bishops only on the question of
individuals and by their general opposition to the West. But now their hands were loosed and all
opposition destroyed. In every important see were obedient executors of the instructions from the
court oligarchy. Then in the autumn of 357, in Sirmium on the Danube, the Arians cast aside
their masks. They had composed a creedal statement (the so-called second formula of Sirmium),
which was already almost openly Arian, and the bishops were required to accept it under threat
of state sanctions. The manifesto of Sirmium, confirmed by imperial authority, rang out like a
trumpet from one end of the empire to the other.

End of Arianism.
This apparent final victory of Arianism turned out to be fatal to it. The Sirmium statement
was so obviously Arian that it inevitably produced a reaction among all the sane elements in the
Church. The coalition they had been able to knit together against Athanasius, Marcellus, and
Rome now fell apart, and the Eastern Church, which had not hitherto been aware of the full ex-
tent of the danger, began to come to its senses.
The healing process was gradual, and the whole weight of the state, a load on Church life
which was never again lifted, was even more apparent. Bishops began to split into theological
parties; new creedal statements were composed. There were struggles, mutual excommunica-
tions, councils, and congresses. The Church historian Socrates later compared this period to a
night skirmish in which no one knows who is his enemy or his friend.

47
Arianism led to the denial in fact of the very essence of Christianity. This was demon-
strated with particular force by the extreme Arians, the so-called Anomoeans, who affirmed that
Christ was absolutely distinct from God. The Church had never recognized so clearly the need
for a precise theological answer, a firm confession of faith. Everyone understood the inadequacy
of mere reference to previous creeds; the figurative expressions used in them were interpreted by
the Arians in their own way. Yet the Nicene term homoousion still seemed suspicious. The first
theological reaction to Arianism therefore united the majority of the Eastern bishops around the
term homoiousion. The Son was “of like substance” with the Father, of the same nature as the
Father; this was the first step. By taking it, the Easterners acknowledged the need for philosophi-
cal terms to express their faith; they themselves took the road for which they had previously con-
demned the defenders of Nicaea.
The Arians once again kept the upper hand, however. On the commission ordered by
Constantius to prepare for the new ecumenical council, they managed to convince the confused
bishops that all harm came from the use of the term “substance,” which it would be best simply
to forbid, calling the Son “like the Father in all.” With this came new divisions, new disputes.
The weary Constantius decided to unite them all in a compromise with a theological minimum,
since a precise creed seemed a constant source of difficulty. At the council convened in Constan-
tinople in 360 to dedicate the Church of St. Sophia, it was proclaimed that the Son is “like the
Father” — the qualification “in all” was discarded. Such a definition might be acceptable to any-
one except, of course, extreme Arians, but it deprived the faith of the Church of its vital content,
its joyous certainty in the Incarnation “for our salvation” of God Himself. At the same time, for
various imaginary crimes, all the bishops who disagreed were deposed and exiled. The Church
was ruled by a new state religion.
Constantius might think he had completed his father‟s work and achieved the longed-for
peace in the Church, but since it was based on a meaningless compromise, the peace was bound
sooner or later to end. A year and a half after the triumph of the Homoian party (as the new
Church-state coalition was called), Constantius died. A reaction now took place, not against any
particular theology this time, but against Christianity itself: for two and a half years (361-63) the
mysterious and tragic shadow of the Emperor Julian the Apostate lay across the empire. His first
act was to establish complete religious freedom. He is reported to have hoped that the Christians
would dispute so bitterly among themselves that they would discredit their faith in all eyes. Ac-
tually the brief reign of Julian demonstrated that the Church when left to itself might solve its
difficulties independently.
Once more the great Alexandrian exile Athanasius returned in triumph to his city. He was
not there long, for when Julian learned that he had baptized several pagan women, he issued an
edict for his expulsion, and the much-traveled bishop again went into hiding. His brief stay in
Alexandria, however, was marked by one of the great, historically decisive acts of his life: the
calling of the Alexandrian Council of 362. Rigor and intractability might have been expected of
him, persecuted for so many years by the whole anti-Nicene East. Yet Athanasius, who had iden-
tified his entire life with the Nicene definition and had never once wavered, even when the whole
Church seemed united in rejecting him, was the first to understand that the errors of the East
were not pure heresy and was able to discern allies and brothers among them. He understood that
real incomprehension lay back of their rejection, and he perceived in their inadequate words their
complete return to the truth. For this alone he deserves his title “Great.” The work of the Council
of 362 was a gesture of reconciliation. It solemnly affirmed the Nicene Creed, but with suffi-

48
ciently lucid explanation to bring back, as to the only salvation, all who had sought the truth in
shadows and rebellion and had not despaired of finding it.
The first to be restored was the West, which had been made to abandon the homoousion
definition only by imperial force. In 363 the legions put on the throne the elderly general Valen-
tinian, who, when the bishops asked to be permitted to summon a council, answered: I am a lay-
man and consider that it would be improper for me to intervene in this; let the hierarchs meet and
decide as they wish. In this atmosphere of freedom the Western Church simply and completely
returned to its original acceptance of the Nicene Creed.
The situation in the East was more complex; Valentinian had appointed as emperor there
his brother Valens (364-78), who continued officially to protect the Homoian party. Outwardly
the life of the Church continued disturbed, the years of divisions, mutual accusations, and ex-
communications taking their toll; yet beneath this sorry surface the mighty neo-Nicene flood was
growing ever greater. A uniquely important role in this restoration was played by three bishops
customarily called the Great Cappadocians. They are Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian,
and Gregory of Nyssa, who with Athanasius are the greatest Fathers and teachers in the tradition
of the Eastern Church. As the Council of Nicaea and the struggle to support it is forever con-
nected with the name of Athanasius, so to these three, and especially to Basil the Great, the
Church owes its final triumph.
Their main contribution was theological; they were rich in the experience of the post-
Nicene disputes, which had revealed the difficulty of expressing the faith of the Church in words,
and they were thinkers and philosophers of genius. They perfected the creation of a theological
language, crystallized its concepts, and expressed all the profound significance of the orthodox
doctrine of the Holy Trinity contained in Athanasius‟ homoousion and in the Nicene Creed. They
forced the whole Church to perceive its own truth.
The bright image of Basil the Great particularly illumines the epilogue of this long,
troubled, often apparently hopeless struggle. A sick man who dreamed constantly of monastic
solitude, of reflection and creative work, still he devoted his whole life to the reconciliation of
Christians, and his tact, patience, and persistence knew no limits. How often there appeared to be
no way out of the blind alley of division that now seemed part of the very flesh of the Church!
Despite insults, misunderstandings, and slander, the great Cappadocian archbishop never slack-
ened his efforts. His service was blessed and recognized before his death by the elderly Athana-
sius, who was able to spend the last years of his life peacefully among his people. Basil com-
pleted this work. He died in 379, just before the last triumph of Nicaea, the Second Ecumenical
Council — like Moses, leading his people to the Promised Land but no entering it himself.

New Relation of Christianity to the World.
All the complexity and ambiguity of the Church‟s new position in the world was revealed
in the Arian rebellion. Victory frequently alternated with defeat, and freedom from persecution
with dependence on authority. It must be acknowledged that the modern Christian tends to judge
the age of Constantine unfavorably. We have recently become sensitive again to the eschatology
of the early Church, and the question arises whether these centuries of union and peace with
state, culture, and society were not a fatal mistake — whether the Church did not become
worldly during this time and reject “the one thing necessary.” As always in tragic periods of de-
cline, the Christian mind is subtly tempted to refuse the highway of responsibility and withdraw
into pure “spirituality.”

49
Yet only the pain of historical defeat hinders us from perceiving that during these fateful
decades a Christian world began to evolve which was far more significant than its actual histori-
cal framework. By this I do not mean any particular form of relation between Church and state,
nor the formal adoption by the public of Christian ceremonies, symbols, or customs, but rather
that profound transformation of the human mind which lay behind all these developments — al-
most imperceptible at first, but crucially important in its consequences. This was the inoculation
of the human mind and conscience with the image of Christ. After Constantine, Christianity be-
came indeed the fate of the world, so that fundamentally whatever occurred in the world became
somehow connected with Christianity and was resolved in relation to it. This is the vital signific-
ance of the period.
The first impression of the fourth century is usually that of a nominal conversion. Out-
wardly it was indeed filled with disputes about Christianity; splendid churches arose in the cities;
the services were more majestically performed, and gold and precious stones appeared on the
vestments. But do we see any moral transformation of society? Did Christianity influence the
laws, customs, or principles of the state that had adopted it?
It is true that Constantine declared Sunday a day of rest, freed the churches and the clergy
from taxes, granted bishops the judiciary right, and protected the family. But a part of his “Chris-
tian” legislation was directed toward the privileges of the Church, and the rest — the legislation
that really strove to humanize life — continued the trend of Roman law toward philanthropy,
which had begun in the third century. In any case, we do not note any sharp break or crisis of
conscience, and in many ways the fourth century was marked, on the contrary, by a greater en-
slavement of man than before. Indeed, the iron Middle Ages are foreshadowed in the greater
pressure on him from the state.
When we judge this period, however, we must not forget that the problem of the
Church‟s influence on the world was posed for it in a different way than it is now posed for us.
We judge and measure the past by standards of Christian achievement and quality of life, be-
cause behind us lie centuries of gradual development of this urge toward the ideal in the human
mind, progressively infecting all aspects of life with a thirst for absolute perfection. We speak of
problems of the state, culture, and society; but they became “problems” only in the light of the
image of the perfect Man and the perfect life that illuminated the world, and in the light of our
new knowledge of good and evil. We often forget with what difficulty and what struggles this
growth of a perspective took place.
The first obstacle the Church encountered was not any particular imperfection or defect
of the state or society, but paganism itself. It is impossible to evaluate truly the achievements of
the period without understanding the nature of this struggle. We think of paganism as primitive
idol worship and consider the victory of the Church something simple and self-evident. But be-
hind the worship of idols, actually making it far less primitive, lay a very particular and inte-
grated perception of the world, a complex of ideas and beliefs deeply rooted in man, which it
was no easy matter to eliminate. Even today, two thousand years after the appearance of Chris-
tianity, it has not completely disappeared. In its most general and simplified form it can be de-
fined as the subjection of man to irrational forces, which he senses in nature — a concept of the
world and of life in it as a fate dependent on these forces. Man can somehow propitiate them or
redeem himself by sacrifice and worship. To some extent he can even control such forces with
magic; but he can never comprehend them, still less liberate himself from them. His whole atti-
tude toward the world is determined by fear and the sense of dependency on mysterious powers;
he can invoke or “charm” them, but cannot make them intelligible or beneficent.

50
Christianity regarded paganism as a terrible lie about the world, which enslaved man and
was consequently a lie about God; and it used all its forces in the struggle for the human soul.
Only in the light of this conflict can we completely understand what now seems to us the increas-
ing worldliness of the Church. During the period of the persecutions, Christians were the little
flock, which, being legally condemned, was outside the state and public life. It could not under-
take any role in the world except to bear witness by word and blood. But now the situation was
radically changed. After Constantine the masses began to pour into the Church. In addition,
through the conversion of the emperor, even before the official condemnation of paganism, the
Church was placed in a central position in the life of the empire, the place occupied by the offi-
cial religion in previous times.
We have seen that the function of this official sort of religion in state and society was to
protect the public well-being by worship and sacrifice, to place the lives of all under the protec-
tion of the gods, and to ensure their obedience to divine laws and their loyalty to the state. If
Christianity had been only eschatology, a call to reject the world and turn wholly to the coming
kingdom “not of this world” (as many think today), the acceptance of this function would indeed
have meant that the Church had become worldly. But the witness of the martyrs had demonstrat-
ed that Christians do not separate religion from life, but affirm that the whole man and all his life
belong wholly to the kingdom of Christ. The entire meaning of the Christian message was that
the kingdom of God had drawn near with the coming of Christ and had become the seed of a new
life here and now in this world. In the light of the reign of the Lord, nothing in the world could
any longer claim to be an absolute value: neither the state, nor culture, nor the family — nothing.
Everything was subordinate to the One Lord; such was the significance of the Christian refusal to
give this title to the emperor.
But now the world itself had accepted and recognized the Lord. The emperor had placed
his kingdom and the whole empire under His protection, and he wished to receive from the
Church the sanction he had previously expected from the gods. Could the Church refuse this? Of
course not, if it had affirmed, in the words of Athanasius, that “in the Cross there is no harm, but
healing for creation.”
To abolish paganism meant, therefore, not simply to abolish idols and idol worship, but
also to appease the eternal need which had nourished them, the need for divine aid, for a divine
sanction for human life and everything great and little in it. More than that, it meant revealing the
true meaning of life and illumining it with a new light. Historians sometimes assert that, in strug-
gling against paganism, Christianity itself adopted pagan elements and ceased to reflect the
evangelical reverence of God “in spirit and in truth.” Churchly piety, the development and in-
creasing complexity of worship, and the reverence for saints and their relics which grew so swift-
ly in the fourth century — the increasing interest in the material aspect of religion, the holy plac-
es, objects, and reliquaries — all have been attributed directly to pagan influence in the Church
and regarded as a compromise with the world for the sake of a mass victory.
The Christian historian is not required in his defense of Christianity simply to reject this
accusation or to deny that there are any analogies between Christianity and pagan forms of reli-
gion. On the contrary, he may boldly accept the charge, for he can see no harm in such analogies.
Christianity adopted and assimilated many forms of pagan religion, not only because they were
the eternal forms of religion in general, but also because the intention of Christianity itself was
not to replace all forms in this world by new ones, but to fill them with new and true meaning.
Baptism by water, the religious meal, the anointing with oil, these basic religious symbols and
rituals were not invented or created by the Church but were already present in the religious usage

51
of mankind. The Church has never denied this link with natural religion, but from the first it has
attributed to the connection a meaning, which is the reverse of what modern historians of religion
see in it. The latter explain everything by “borrowings” and “influences,” while the Church, in
the words of Tertullian, has always asserted that the human soul is “by nature a Christian,” and
therefore even natural religion — even paganism itself — is only a distortion of something by
nature true and good. In accepting any particular form, the Church in its own mind has returned
to God what rightly belongs to Him, always and in every way restoring the fallen image.
In other words, we must ask not only whence the Church took a particular form and why,
but also what meaning it has given it. Particularly interesting from this point of view was Church
building, which flourished so luxuriantly during and after the reign of Constantine. In the early
era of persecutions the Church of course had no public buildings, but the first Christians sharply
contrasted their concept of religion with the Judaic attitude toward the Temple at Jerusalem, on
the one hand, and the pagan attitude toward a temple, on the other. For paganism the temple was
the sacred dwelling of a god, but “sacred” meant distinct from “profane” — wholly contradictory
to it. The temple united men with the divinity as much as it divided it from them. In the temple
one could make sacrifices for people, propitiate the god, and render him what was due, but out-
side it everything remained profane and divided from the deity.
But the basic Gospel of Christianity was that from now on God had chosen man himself
as His temple, and He no longer dwells in man-made temples. “Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” In this way the contradiction between sacred and
profane was overcome, because Christ had come to sanctify man and his entire life, to make it
sacred again and to unite it with God. In calling themselves the Body of Christ, Christians of
course could not help connecting these words with the words of Christ himself about the destruc-
tion of the Temple in Jerusalem and its restoration in three days. The place where Christians ga-
thered was sacred, and the sanctity of the gathering made any place and the whole world a Tem-
ple.

The Visible Church.
Yet now the Christians themselves were beginning to build churches, and after the time
of Constantine, Church building became one of the main features of Christian life. Did this mean
a break in the mind of the Church, a return to the well-trodden road of a temple concept of reli-
gion? The answer is contained in facts which might at first appear to have only archaeological
interest. The basic model of the Christian temple in the fourth century was the basilica. This was
not in origin a religious building but specifically profane, designated for large gatherings — for
the court, for trade, or for politics. This meant that in building their own churches Christians de-
liberately rejected as prototypes both the pagan temple and the Temple of Jerusalem, described
in detail in the Bible. In the light of Christianity a temple acquired a completely new meaning,
incompatible with the old. The pagan temple was subordinated architecturally to its religious
function as the house of a god; in its center, therefore, stood an idol or a depiction of the god.
The Christian church, on the other hand, was wholly subordinate to the concept of the Christian
gathering, and so was its architecture. In the center of the building stood that which transformed
this gathering into a Church, uniting Christians into a living temple of the Body of Christ: the
table for the celebration of the Eucharist. The appearance of Church buildings, therefore,
changed nothing essential in the Church, but on the contrary, the building itself acquired a new
significance.

52
With Constantine, the Christian church emerged into full view and ceased to be a place of
semisecret meetings, so that gradually it became the center of religious life in the city. In Con-
stantinople, his new capital, which was ceremoniously opened in 330, he had originated the plan
for a Christian city which was to be the standard for all city construction in the Christian Middle
Ages. The Church building was its mystical center or heart. A church crowned the city with its
cupola or protected it with its sacred shadow. The idea itself was admittedly borrowed from pa-
ganism, and historians are still arguing as to what inspired Constantine in his rebuilding of an-
cient Byzantium — whether it was the vision of a sacred center for the Christian empire or
echoes of ancient dreams of a philosophical city. For later generations, in any case, Constanti-
nople remained the specifically Christian center of the empire. In the Church building, from then
on, man‟s whole life received a religious sanction. The Church gatherings in it gradually came to
coincide with gatherings of citizens.
A new “physical” link was established between the Church and the world. The martyr
who had suffered in this city was naturally distinguished from the throng of martyrs as its own
saint, the spiritual patron of the city; and the prayer offered in the Church “for all and in behalf of
all” was now perceived to be primarily a prayer for that particular place and for these people. It
naturally came to include their daily needs and embraced man‟s whole life in a new way, from
birth to death, in all its forms: governmental, social, or economic. Frequently, it is true, the
Christian saint assumed in the popular mind the significance formerly held by the local god or
“genius,” and the Church service was interpreted as a ritual religious sanction for all aspects of
life. Yet at the same time the Church building and the cult were now becoming the main chan-
nels or forms for preaching Christianity to a still semipagan world — the school for a new Chris-
tian society. By responding to all the needs of this world and assuming the function previously
performed by paganism, the Church united everything from within with the Good News, and
placed the image of Christ in the center of life.
Whatever may be said about the swift development of the cult of saints, even of its mon-
strous distortions, the fact remains that the image of the saint himself and his life as it was read in
the Church spoke of a new meaning in life and summoned the people to Him by whom this saint
had lived and to whom he had completely given himself. However much men may have brought
into the Church what they had seen and sought in pagan temples, when they entered it they now
heard those eternal and immutable words about the Savior crucified for our sins — about the per-
fect love that God has shown us — and about His kingdom as the final goal of all living beings.
One historian has called the essential nature of this evolution in Church life the “conse-
cration of time.” While its highest point and final meaning remained the Sacrament — that is, the
anticipation of all the fullness and joy of the kingdom of God and of the timeless and eternal
presence of Christ among those who have loved Him; and while the narrow way of baptismal
renunciation of the sufficiency of this world was still the only road leading to the Sacrament; yet
the rays of the Sacrament now illumined this world as well. The consecration of time, the conse-
cration of nature, the consecration of life, a firm faith that “in the Cross is no harm but healing
for creation,” the gradual illumination of all things by the image of Christ — this was the affir-
mative significance of what has so often been regarded as the growing worldliness of the Church.
This “worldliness” should not be measured by its inadequacies or distortions, which were all too
frequent, but by its positive inspiration; it revealed in a new way the same old catholicity, the
Church‟s integrated and all-embracing awareness of itself as a seed cast into the world for man‟s
salvation.

53
There was pressure from the state and enslavement of bishops. Yet in the final analysis it
was Athanasius and Basil who were glorified by the Church as the “rule of faith” — not Euse-
bius of Nicomedia — and it was their truth that the state itself accepted and to which it submit-
ted. This was not an accident. For the first time the principle of objective truth, independent of
everything else in the world, was proclaimed superior to all powers and authorities. Today we
hardly remember that the idea of objective truth, proclaimed by the whole modern world, entered
the mind of man at this time, in the midst of disputes over words which may seem to us trifling;
and that in them the mind of modern man was in the making: his faith in reason and freedom, his
fearlessness in encountering reality whatever it might be, since there is something stronger than
the external buffetings of reality: the truth.
Yes, there was a reconciliation with the world, an acceptance of its culture, the forms of
its life, its language and thought. Basil the Great and his friend Gregory the Theologian would
recall with gratitude all their lives the golden years spent at the pagan university of Athens (along
with Julian the Apostate). Basil would even write a little treatise for young men on the value of
studying secular — that is, pagan — literature. Gregory hymned the joyous mystery of the Trini-
ty in classical stanzas. Yet this reconciliation took place under the sign of the Cross. It introduced
into the world itself the image of absolute perfection, and therefore a judgment and a conflict.
Everything was consecrated, but the coming Kingdom cast its shadow over all; the world had
become finite and was recognized to be a pathway, struggle, and growth.

Rise of Monasticism.
There is no better illustration of the unique quality of this reconciliation of the Church
with the empire than the rise, in the same fourth century, of monasticism. Its importance in the
history of the Church is not inferior to that |of the conversion of Constantine.
The origin of monasticism is usually associated with the name of St. Anthony. His life
had been described by Athanasius, and this document has always remained the standard of the
monastic ideal, and defined the whole later development of monasticism in the Church. Out-
wardly Anthony‟s life followed a very simple pattern. He was born in Egypt around 250 in a
Coptic Christian family. When he was still very young, he heard in church the words of the Gos-
pel: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, . . . and come and
follow me,” and he was shaken by them. He gave away all his property and devoted himself en-
tirely to ascetic feats, starting in his own village but very soon withdrawing into the desert, where
he spent twenty years in complete solitude. Athanasius has described this period of his life, often
very realistically, as a ceaseless struggle with the devil. Later the second period began: followers
thronged to him from all sides, and he emerged from his seclusion to become their teacher and
leader. The principles of his ascetic doctrine were set forth by Athanasius in the form of speech-
es, which Anthony addressed to the monks. “Then monasteries arose on the mountains,” wrote
Athanasius, “and the desert was inhabited by monks, men who had rejected all earthly goods and
had inscribed their names in the heavenly city.”
Monasticism acquired its present form somewhat later, from St. Pachomius the Great.
Also a native of Egypt, he was the first to create a life in common and the regulations for it; the
rule of Pachomius has formed the basis for later monastic rules. Under his guidance, in the The-
baid on the upper Nile, was created a unique monastic state numbering thousands of persons. It
was visited in 357-58 by St. Basil, who on his return from Asia Minor created a monastic com-
munity there, with his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend Gregory the Theologian. Even

54
before this, Anthony‟s disciple Hilarion had brought the monastic life to Syria and Palestine, and
in the same period it began to flourish in the West as well.
Monasticism attracted more and more people into the desert, to the monasteries, and it
soon acquired a particular significance even for those who did not become monks. Descriptions
of the lives and feats of the hermits — The Life of Anthony, The Life of Paul of Thebes (written
by St. Jerome), Historia Lausiaca, The History of the Monks, and so on — were to become for
centuries the favorite reading matter of all Byzantine society. Characteristics of monastic wor-
ship penetrated to the city churches, where the services came to be decked in the same colors.
Our liturgical regulations even today are those of the Monastery of St. Sabas in Jerusalem. Mo-
nasteries arose within the cities themselves; by the middle of the sixth century in Constantinople
alone there were seventy-six. Monks assumed a more active role in Church life. They had begun
as a movement of laymen; neither Anthony nor Pachomius had had any hierarchical rank; they
apparently considered the monastic life incompatible with the priesthood, and even more with
the episcopate. But gradually monasticism was transformed into an official and even a higher
Church calling, so that in later Byzantium only monks could become bishops. Beginning as a
physical withdrawal into the desert, the monastery was established in the very heart of the city. It
became one of the most integral signs of that Christian world whose history had begun with the
conversion of Constantine.
What was the meaning of this swift growth and development? Many historians, again de-
ceived by external analogies, insist on deriving it from some non-Christian source, seeing in it
the usual “metamorphosis” or transformation of the “white” Christianity of the early Church into
the “black” Christianity of the Middle Ages. There is an analogy here in the ascetic practices
worked out in such detail by the monks, the basic forms of which we do indeed encounter out-
side Christianity as well. Solitude, struggle against one‟s thoughts, “concentration of attention,”
impassivity, and so forth — all allegedly entered Christianity through the ascetic stream which in
that period was growing in strength; and this stream was in turn connected with dualism, with the
recognition that matter was evil and the source of evil. Monasticism, by this evaluation, is thus
presented as a Christian form of Manichaeism, a dualistic sect which had great success in the
fourth century.
On the other hand, while renunciation of the world is fundamental as its original inspira-
tion, it must be recognized that this renunciation cannot be considered something so absolutely
new for the Christian mind as to need derivation from Manichaeism or Neoplatonism, as Har-
nack and other historians have held. While in the course of its development monasticism bor-
rowed much from other ascetic traditions, and while there were even extreme tendencies and dis-
tortions within it, neither these borrowings nor the distortions were the reasons for its rise, just as
Greek philosophy did not give rise to Christian theology, although its language was used in theo-
logical development.
In fact, painstaking studies of the early records carried on in the last few decades have
indicated that monasticism is only the expression under new conditions of the original evangeli-
cal concept of Christianity, which had ruled the life of the early Church. Renunciation of the
world is a condition for Christianity: .” . . Who does not leave his father and his mother . . .” Re-
nunciation is neither condemnation nor denial of the world, but in Christ the glory of the coming
Kingdom was revealed to man, and in its light “the image of this world passes.” All is now dri-
ven toward that final point, and everything is measured by it. In this world, however, evil contin-
ues to reign; it hinders us from reaching the Kingdom, tearing us away from it by thousands of
temptations and illusions. The road of the Christian is to be the narrow road of struggle; does not

55
the Gospel speak of the strength of evil, of the struggle against it, or of renunciation for the sake
of the Kingdom?
In the era of persecutions, the simple fact that a man belonged to the Christian religion
already separated him from the world and its life. As Karl Heussi, the historian of monasticism,
has written, “It is enough to imagine the situation of the first Christian communities within the
pagan world, their complete separation from public life, from the theater and the circus, from all
celebrations, the limited space in which their outward lives proceeded, to be convinced of the
„monastic‟ nature of early Christianity, which lived within the world but separated from it.” Yet
the closer the world came to the Church and the more it penetrated into its inner life, as we see in
the moral decline of many Christians at the end of the second century, the stronger grew the mo-
nastic tendency within the Church itself among those who strove by a standard of high evangeli-
cal idealism to hold themselves apart. We find many examples of this isolation of ascetics even
in the third century, and it may be said that by the beginning of the fourth all the component parts
of monasticism were present. Athanasius has stated that “before Anthony no single monk had yet
known the great desert,” yet the decisive influence for Anthony himself was that of a hermit
from a neighboring village already “trained in a life of solitude.” One of the most recent investi-
gators of early monasticism has written:
The supernatural essence of Christian life has always required some absolute expression
which would reveal the complete freedom of the Christian in relation to all the realities of this
world. Martyrdom was the first response to this demand, born from outward conditions; when
these conditions changed and the world ceased to struggle against Christianity, but, on the con-
trary, proposed an alliance which could and very often did become more dangerous for spiritual
values, which were not susceptible to “naturalization,” monasticism became a sort of affirmation
of their independence. . . It brought nothing essentially new into the Church of the first centuries;
it was an expression in a new form, created by new circumstances, of what is customarily called
the “eschatological” nature of Christianity, of which the first Christians had been acutely aware
and which they had expressed in martyrdom. From the very beginning the ideal of chastity and
of voluntary rejection in general of certain comforts, which were not evil in themselves, also de-
veloped alongside martyrdom. When the latter disappeared, monasticism inevitably became all
that martyrdom had embodied and expressed.
4

One might ask whether the essence of the early Church, the source and expression of its
entire life, had not been the unity and the assembly of all together, crowned and expressed in the
sacrament of communion by all with one bread and one cup. Does not the monastic ideal of soli-
tude as a condition for salvation contradict the original experience of the Church? Yet here again,
it was a reaction to the danger of easy sacramentalism, which had gained strength in the fourth
century. The assembly of the Church became more and more obviously an assembly of citizens
and its separation from the world as a “sacrament of the coming age,” increasingly nominal. Mo-
nasticism was a reminder that while the pledge and source of new life was the Eucharist and the
grace it bestowed, still acceptance of it was a free act by man, so that Christ‟s deed in no way
diminishes human freedom or effort. While practicing asceticism in solitude, the monks con-
vened on the Lord‟s Day for the Eucharist, the assembly. Yet in their solitary asceticism they re-
veal the whole range of responsibility imposed on the Christian by his participation in the Sa-

56
crament, and demonstrate what absolute demands it makes upon the conscience of those whom it
sanctifies.
Struggle against the devil, whom the Gospels call the “Prince of this world,” construction
within oneself of a new man after the image of Christ, and as a final goal, “deification” — that is,
communion with God and acquisition of “peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” as St. Paul had pre-
viously described the kingdom of God — these were the monastic ideals, and this was the expe-
rience that became imprinted upon the immense monastic literature. In the course of centuries
the experience would be more and more precisely described, and the “art of spiritual life” ana-
lyzed to the last detail. By comparison with this experience, with its depth of perception of man
and its knowledge of him, scientific psychology frequently appears petty and trivial.
It must be flatly stated that until now monasticism has shown us the only practical “suc-
cess” of Christianity, unique in nature, tested by experience, and confirmed by thousands of ex-
amples. (This does not, of course, exclude the possibility of other approaches to the spiritual
life). In the course of centuries, the visage of the sainted monk has towered over the whole Chris-
tian world and illuminated it. In this visage, emaciated by fasting, vigil, and asceticism, washed
by tears of repentance and illumined by spiritual vision, the body itself transformed into a spirit,
innumerable generations of Christians have perceived undoubted proof of the reality of a new
heaven and a new earth.
How can we reconcile the almost complete dominance of this monastic image with the
development of the Christian world? Would not the triumph of monasticism deprive it of all
meaning? If monasticism and the desert were recognized as the highest norm even by those who
were building that Christian world or dealing with it, would not this “building” itself become an
illusory and sinfully vain matter? Here we touch on the last and most important apparent contra-
diction of the age of Constantine in Church history.
Outwardly, it was true, the Christian way seemed to split into irreconcilable contradic-
tions. The Church building protected and sanctified the whole world and all its life; but tens and
thousands of Christians escaped from that world and sought salvation outside it. If each approach
had constituted a condemnation of the other, there would be only absurdity. But the uniqueness
of the age of Constantine was that both monasticism and the building of a Christian world were
regarded — not in terms of theory but in living experience — as equally essential and comple-
mentary. Harnessed together, they preserved the integrity of the evangelical outlook, though per-
haps only the vision of it.
The world receives a Christian sanction and is blessed by the Church, but monasticism
became the “salt” which does not allow the world to absorb Christianity and subject it to itself. In
the light of this eternal reminder, the world already regarded itself as an image that passes — as a
way to another, final reality which completes and judges all. The monks withdraw, but from the
desert they bless the Christian empire and the Christian city, and they never weary of praying for
them; they interpret this very abnegation as a service to the world for its salvation. It is a concept
perhaps only embodied as a miracle or an exception; the world, even in its new Christian aspect,
continued to be the same unadmitted idol, requiring services to itself, while monasticism fre-
quently turned into spiritual individualism and disdain for the rest of life. Nevertheless, an inner
standard for Christian action in history had been found.

State Religion — Second Ecumenical Council.
With the reign of the Emperor Theodosius the Great (379-95), the first cycle in the devel-
opment of new relations between Church and state came to an end. An edict of 380 declared

57
Christianity the required faith and made it finally the state religion. The freedom announced in
the Edict of Milan was ended, but it had been doomed from the start. It was precluded by the
very nature of the ancient state, whose basic feature, a theocratic conception of itself, was actual-
ly reinforced by the conversion of Constantine. In Constantine‟s reign the persecution of pagan-
ism began. It grew in strength under his sons; in 341 the “madness of sacrifices” was forbidden
by law, and in 353 all cults of idols were condemned and their temples closed. True, these laws
were hardly enforced in practice; paganism still represented a considerable force, which explains
the attempt to revive it under Julian. Culture, the school, and learning would long remain almost
a monopoly of pagans. Still, the conversion of the emperor doomed it to disappearance, and this
process was accelerated by the extent to which the emperors drew closer to the Church.
It must be frankly admitted that the Church demanded of the state that it combat pagan-
ism and itself denied the principle of toleration. It had forgotten the words of Tertullian, ad-
dressed to the persecutors of Christianity: “Both common right and natural law require that each
man bow down to the god in which he believes. It is not right for one religion to violate another.”
In his work On the Confusions of Pagan Religions written for the sons of Constantine, the Chris-
tian writer Firmicus Maternus exhorted them: “Come to the aid of these unfortunates; it is better
to save them in spite of themselves than to allow them to perish [emphasis supplied].” But the
minds of Christians, in which the evangelical ideal of religious freedom had flared up briefly
during the experience of martyrdom, were blinded for a long time by the vision of a Christian
theocracy that would bring men to Christ not only by grace but by law as well. Much time passed
before the pagan nature of this theocracy was recognized. State sanctions gave the Church un-
precedented strength, and perhaps brought many to faith and new life, but after Theodosius the
Great it was no longer only a community of believers; it was also a community of those obliged
to believe.
Later, at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (381), the first chapter of the
great theological disputes was completed, and Nicene orthodoxy triumphed. The council itself
was far in spirit from the victorious radiance shown by the bishops when they met at Nicaea.
Now wounds from many years of division had to be healed and the whole weight of the Arian
rebellion was felt. Many personal questions were decided, with inevitable sacrifices and com-
promises. Gregory the Theologian, inexperienced and naïve in higher church politics, had stub-
bornly defended the truth of Nicaea in the Arian capital, but was now apparently unneeded and
withdrew from the council. The bitterness of this remained with him to the end of his life. The
Church was “reconstructed” for its new official existence with no little difficulty, and not all had
enough wisdom, patience, and flexibility for it. Behind the dogmatic unity we begin to sense a
jealousy on the part of the ancient seats of Antioch and Alexandria of the growing significance of
the Church of Constantinople. Afar off, the see of St. Peter was also alarmed at this rise of a
second Rome. The spring of orthodox Byzantinism was over, and the heat and burdens of the
long journey were beginning.

St. John Chrysostom.
One name must still be mentioned, that of St. John Chrysostom. The real situation of
Church life in those decades is best sensed in his life and writings, and one may also discern in
them all the depth and difficulty of the process that had begun. A presbyter of Antioch famed for
his eloquence, John was made bishop of Constantinople in 398 and devoted himself zealously to
his pastoral duties, the first of which was preaching. His central concern was the Christian life of
his flock in its variety and everyday reality. Before him was a world that had accepted Christiani-

58
ty but was still so close to paganism, so deeply poisoned by sin and ignorance, that it did not take
the faith itself too seriously. People crowded into the churches, but outside church walls — and
indeed, sometimes within them — were moral irresponsibility, hatred, and injustice.
Chrysostom was more than a great preacher; he built houses and shelters for the poor,
exposed the rich, and attacked luxury. His social indignation was derived directly from the Gos-
pel — all evil, he claimed, proceeds from “these cold words: mine and thine.” All men are equal,
all have the same needs and the same rights. “Put God in the place of your slaves; you grant them
freedom in your wills. But free Christ from hunger, from the want of prison, from nakedness.”
Everything was to be renewed by Christianity: the family, society, and the concept of religion.
Chrysostom was not afraid to expose moral corruption even in the palace, and this was the be-
ginning of his way of the cross.
Condemned by false brothers and sent away by the emperor, he died on his way to a re-
mote place of exile. Byzantium seems never to have rendered to any other of its saints such love,
such honor, and such faithfulness. Modern concepts of social justice, political equality, and the
general duty of organized help to the poor came much later. Chrysostom‟s life, however, was a
constant reminder to Byzantium of the ultimate source of all social inspiration, because of the
now almost forgotten reverence he paid to poverty as the image of Christ Himself.

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils.

Development of Church Regional Structure.
In 395 Emperor Theodosius the Great on his deathbed divided the empire between his
two sons. Honorius received the West and Arcadius, the East. Theoretically the empire continued
to be one state with two emperors, but in practice, from that point on, the Eastern and Western
roads inevitably diverged.
In the fourth century there had begun an evolution in ecclesiastical structure which was
inevitable in view of the new position of the Church in the empire. Its general significance may
be defined as the co-ordination of external Church structure with the imperial administrative
structure. This development was not a revolutionary one, since it continued trends begun long
before the conversion of Constantine — the gradual development of several large ecclesiastical
regions, each united around a senior Church. The Council of Nicaea, in its sixth canon, sanc-
tioned this situation. It recognized the de facto primacy of Rome in the West, of Alexandria in
Egypt, and of Antioch in Syria. Since these primacies arose spontaneously, each expressed all
the particularities of local conditions, the growth of the Church in given parts of the Roman Em-
pire. Thus Rome was the only apostolic see in the West and had exclusive importance there.
There was a difference, however, between the canonical or jurisdictional primacy of Rome over
neighboring Italian churches and its moral authority, which was recognized, as we have seen,
beyond the borders of Italy in Africa, Spain, and Gaul. The African Church from the beginning
had had a special structure and canonical practice; the highest authority there was the regular
synod of bishops, who met twice a year. In the East the canonical forms of ecclesiastical union
differed again, depending on various historical conditions. In Egypt there was almost complete
centralization: all authority was concentrated in the hands of the Alexandrian bishop or “pope,”
in relation to whom the bishops held a position which by modern analogy one may define as that
of a vicar bishop. In Syria, on the other hand, the local bishop was much more independent, al-
though here, too, the center of agreement had from the first been the Church of the second city of

59
the empire, Antioch. Though less important than these three apostolic seats, Ephesus was still a
center for Asia Minor. In other areas there were no such large centers and the churches were
usually grouped around a metropolis or capital of a province. It is characteristic, for example,
that the Church of Jerusalem, once the mother of all Christians, represented itself at the end of
the third century as a simple bishopric in the orbit of the metropolis of Caesarea, the civic center
of Palestine. Only after the fourth century, because of Constantine‟s special interest in the holy
places and the flood of pilgrims, did its ecclesiastical significance also begin to grow.
While from the beginning the indivisible nucleus of Church structure had been the local
Church or community or meeting headed by one bishop, presbyters, and deacons (for this nuc-
leus flows from the very nature of the Church as the visible incarnation everywhere of the “new
people of God”), it is quite clear that the relations or canonical links between the churches dif-
fered and were determined by local peculiarities of their growth and the development of Chris-
tianity itself. One thing is undeniable: the links were conceived and felt to be just as essential and
elemental as the structure of each community; no single Church was self-sufficient, if only be-
cause its bishop received consecration from other bishops and in this way expressed and mani-
fested the oneness of the gifts and life of the Spirit throughout the universal Church. The forms
of this bond still differed, however. In some regions the highest canonical authority was the un-
ion of a group of churches around the Church of the main city in a province, whose bishop was
recognized as metropolitan; in other areas such provinces in turn were united around some still
more ancient, great, or apostolic Church, thus composing an ecclesiastical “region.” In Egypt, on
the other hand, there were no metropolia, but all the bishops had the archbishop of Alexandria as
their immediate primate.
Metropolitan councils decided general matters; they were the court of appeals for com-
plaints against the local bishop and regulated relations between bishops, changed boundaries of
bishoprics if necessary, and so forth. All the bishops of a province under the chairmanship of the
metropolitan participated in the consecration of new bishops. Decrees of the councils concerning
Church structure, discipline, and such matters received the name of canon (rule); and starting
with the fourth century, collections of canons began to appear. For example, in that century eigh-
ty-five so-called apostolic canons were widely distributed, and they form the foundation of the
Orthodox canonical tradition to the present day. The canons of the ecumenical councils were
gradually added to them, as were those of the local councils having general ecclesiastical signi-
ficance, such as the Antiochene council of 341, mentioned in the preceding chapter. The canoni-
cal collections received their final form much later, but study of the canons even at this early
stage demonstrates the gradual development of Church structure. We may note here that the
Second Ecumenical Council concentrated attention solely on the Eastern half of the empire, and
from this time the difference in canonical evolution between East and West becomes fully dis-
cernible.
Nicaea had taken note and sanctioned the form of the universal unity of the Church, its
catholicity, as it had evolved toward the end of the third century. This did not hold back the de-
velopment of form, however; in the course of the fourth century we see an increasingly definite
coordination of Church structure with that of the state. The empire was divided into “dioceses,”
and the second rule of the Ecumenical Council of 381 notes a corresponding division of the
Church, too, into dioceses: the ecclesiastical region of Egypt, with its center in Alexandria; the
East, centered at Antioch; Pontus, centered at Caesarea of Cappadocia; Asia, centered at Ephe-
sus; and Thrace, at Heraclea. In this way the previous structure was combined, as it were, with
the new, in which the decisive factor became the civic importance of the city. Dioceses were in

60
turn divided into “provinces,” and the latter into “eparchies”; we must remember that all these
terms are taken from Roman administrative terminology. Later the principle according to which
“the administration of Church affairs must follow civil and rural administration” was officially
sanctioned by Church rule.
5

The Byzantine Idea of Church and State
Alongside this natural process of co-ordination, perceptible even before Constantine‟s
conversion, we now observe the creation of a sort of imperial center of the Church, wholly linked
in its rise and development with the changing relationship of Church and empire and with the
ambiguous but fully obvious weight of imperial authority itself in Church affairs. We have seen
that a kind of ecclesiastical general staff grew up around Constantine almost immediately after
his conversion and strove to influence the Church through the emperor, thus counterbalancing, as
it were, the previous centers of catholicity. Its members included Constantine‟s old friend Osius
of Cordova and the two Eusebiuses and their group. The Christian emperor inevitably created
around himself a new center of attraction for the Church, but this must not be regarded — as it is
by some historians — as the enslavement of the Eastern episcopate in rudiments of that “caesa-
ropapism” with which they constantly charge the Eastern Church.
We must from the start perceive the unique profundity of the Byzantine concept of rela-
tions between Church and state, which are linked not by any concordat or juridical limitation of
power, but by the truth; which is to say, by the faith of the Church, which the emperor first, and
through him the empire itself, recognized as its truth, and as a truth superior to themselves. The
religious attitude of the empire was not at all a matter of indifference to the Church. A heretical
or apostate emperor would mean the downfall of the Christian world, a new defeat of truth by a
lie, over which it had only just triumphed — a new defection of the world from Christ. We must
not forget that the modern lay state, which arose out of the failure and decay of this Christian ex-
perience, was born at a time when Christianity itself had lost its universal appeal, and religion
became for a long period the private affair of each individual, particularly a matter of his fate af-
ter death. But the success or failure, the errors and achievements, of Byzantium can be evaluated
only if we assess the completely different experience of Christianity itself, in that period, as pri-
marily a sense of the cosmic victory of Christ over the “Prince of this world.” In this victory the
conversion of Constantine acquires a special significance, as already noted: here the state, hither-
to the main instrument of diabolical malice against the Church, bowed down before Christ. But
in doing so it immediately reacquired all the positive significance that Christians, beginning with
St. Paul, had never denied it. To orthodox and heretics alike, the concept of a religiously neutral
state was equally alien, as was the concept of “clericalism” — the hierarchical subordination of
state to Church — which arose later in the West. In the Eastern concept the Church embraced the
whole world and was its inner essence, standard, and the source of gifts of the Spirit within it;
but it was not the authority in worldly political matters, nor even the source of authority. The lat-
ter was granted to emperors and rulers; they should be guided by the truth of the Church, but
they did not receive authority from the Church.
Only in this light can we understand why orthodox and heretics alike exercised influence
over the emperor, and not merely from opportunism and ambition. Each sincerely believed in his
own truth and wished to make it the norm for the Christian empire. The drama of the East lay in
the fact that this vision turned out impossible to fulfill, and in actual life frequently alternated

5
Canon 17, Chalcedon.

61
with evil. The state itself was still too set in its pagan categories, continuing to believe itself the
final goal and value, and religion only its instrument. While for the state, too, the fate of the
Church and its dogmatic disputes were not matters of indifference, this was for other reasons.
Any division within the Church immediately reflected on the tranquility of the state.

Constantinople vs. Alexandria
In the fourth century there arose really two new centers of attraction for the Church: Con-
stantinople and Jerusalem. Constantine‟s interest in the Holy Land, his mother Helen‟s search for
the wood of the Cross, the adornment of Jerusalem with magnificent churches, all have a special
significance if we take into account the fact that the second holy city for Constantine was Con-
stantinople, which he founded. There was perhaps even a subconscious sense of a special mis-
sion in the history of salvation: the city of the Cross and the city arising out of the victory of the
Cross; the reign of Constantine crowning the victory of Christ; the world with two centers — the
King of the Jews and the king of the Romans — reconciled in His sight. Through the centuries
this mystical vision of Constantinople as a holy city would broaden and deepen, but it undoub-
tedly originated with its first emperor. Eusebius of Nicomedia made no mistake when he ex-
changed his ancient and celebrated see for the still obscure city of Constantinople, for here lay
the highway of historical Christianity.
When the new capital was founded in 330, this imperial center was allotted a suitable po-
sition in the Church. It was at first the modest seat of one of the suffragans of the metropolitan of
Heraclea; but it was doomed to elevation, if the expression may be allowed. Constantinople was
created to be a second Rome, and the Christian center of the empire as well. In the Church of the
Twelve Apostles, which he had built, Constantine prepared in the midst of the twelve symbolic
tombs of the apostles a thirteenth, for himself. Did not this conversion of the empire fulfill the
prophecy of the apostles? It is from this thirteenth tomb that his title as “equal to the apostles”
came.
True enough, the omens of Constantinople were sometimes doubtful; for many years it
was a center of Arianism, and Athanasius had elevated Alexandria in the eyes of the Church by
his struggle for truth and freedom. Even when Constantinople became orthodox, the hostility of
Alexandria did not slacken; it reappeared in a ridiculous attempt to support a certain Maxim the
Cynic against St. Gregory the Theologian; in a passionate and hasty “Council at the Oak” in 402,
which condemned Chrysostom; and also during the struggle of Cyril against Nestorius, despite
the justice of that cause in the main.
Yet fifty years after the founding of the city, the Fathers or the Second Ecumenical Coun-
cil were already proclaiming that the bishop of Constantinople held primacy of honor after the
bishop of Rome, because Constantinople was the “New Rome, the city of the Emperor and the
Senate.”
6
For a time this changed nothing in the basic structure of the Eastern Church, which was
defined at the same council. Constantinople was not allotted any region and formally its bishop
continued to be one of the bishops of the diocese of Thrace, headed by the metropolitan of He-
raclea. In fact, however, the canon that confirmed his “primacy of honor” made him a unique
center of the whole Eastern Church and defined the entire empire as his region. The two forms of
ecclesiastical structure — that which had developed organically and that which Constantinople
now symbolized — obviously did not coincide, and one of them would sooner or later have to
submit to the other. Here lay the explanation of the prolonged conflict between Alexandria and

6
Canon 3, Second Ecumenical Council.

62
Constantinople, which kept smoldering and flaring up intermittently into bright flame throughout
these centuries.

The Christological Controversy — Nestorius and Cyril.
The period between the fourth and eighth centuries is usually called in textbooks of
Church history the era of the ecumenical councils. Its predominant significance, of course, was
the entry of the human mind into the “mind of truth”; its highest point was the Fourth Ecumeni-
cal Council at Chalcedon (451), at which the doctrine of the God-Manhood of Christ was proc-
laimed. Not only theology but external political events closely connected with this Christological
controversy were decided at Chalcedon, but the most profound contribution of the period was its
searching inquiry into the meaning of the God-Manhood of Jesus Christ for the world and for
mankind. For a question as to the nature of Christ is always a question as to the nature of man
and his task. The passion engendered in this discussion may be explained by its vital signific-
ance.
The first theological theme to be taken up by the councils, that of the Trinity, had already
been discussed in Christological terms in the disputes of the fourth century. The whole concept
of Christ‟s Incarnation and earthly achievement depended on whether He was recognized as God
or as a “creature.” Was He really both God and man, or was the same gulf still between mankind
and its Maker, with man still doomed to enslavement and sin, death, and separation? The triumph
of the Nicene term homoousion was the first clear answer. Christ was God; the Incarnation of
God was real. Yet the Nicene recognition, with such difficulty put into words, led inevitably to a
further question in the mind of the Church. If God were united with man in Christ, how was such
a union possible, and what could be discerned as man in it? Would he not “burn up” in this con-
tact with God? Would not the whole concept lead again to some illusion? If Christ is God, what
is the value and significance of His human achievement?
This was not a search for an abstract formula, which would satisfy the Greek philosophiz-
ing mind, nor yet a prying into divine secrets, but a reflection on man‟s freedom, on the meaning
of his achievement and personal effort. Directly connected with the Arian disputes, this question
had been posed and unsuccessfully answered by one of the leading supporters of the Nicene
Creed, Bishop Apollinarius of Laodicea, who interpreted the union of God and man in Christ as
requiring the elimination of some element of human nature. The divine Mind, the Logos, re-
placed the human and created logos in Jesus; since the mind is the highest and dominant part of
man, and since the Man Jesus had the divine Mind itself, He was God. Apollinarianism was im-
mediately condemned as a heresy; there could be no genuine salvation if the fully human were
replaced in Christ by a cut-down and diminished version of man. Yet again, as with Arius, mere
condemnation was not a positive answer. The dispute and the search for a theologically adequate
solution began in earnest at the beginning of the fifth century, in the conflict between Nestorius
of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria.
Nestorius and Cyril belonged to two different trends or schools of Christian thought, two
distinct psychological attitudes toward Christianity itself, which had gradually formed long be-
fore the start of the Christological dispute. These were the schools of Antioch and Alexandria.
The differences between them had many causes: different philosophical influences, that of Aris-
totle on the Antiochenes and of Plato on the Alexandrians; the opposition between Semitic real-
ism and Hellenistic idealism; differences in religious practices and traditions. In interpreting Ho-
ly Scripture, the Antiochenes feared allegories, symbols, multiplications of “spiritual meanings,”
everything that flourished so richly in Origen‟s theology. They particularly sought literal mean-

63
ing and historical accuracy in the understanding of the text and only later drew their theological
conclusions. These conclusions have been called “anthropological maximalism” by a modern
investigator. In this country of voluntary and heroic asceticism it was the human effort of Christ
that first attracted attention; this was the justification for the efforts of His followers, and a wit-
ness to human freedom. Although this approach was basically correct and evangelical, one might
very easily overstep a fine line and divide Christ Himself, distinguishing His human effort in
such a way as to give it an independent significance. The Good News of the Son of God become
man might pale before the image of the Man of Righteousness.
Thus in Syria, which was called the diocese of the East, a definite theological tradition
gradually emerged. Its spirit was already apparent in Diodorus of Tarsus, one of the main partic-
ipants in the Second Ecumenical Council; it was systematically expressed by his disciple, Theo-
dore of Mopsuestia, in whose doctrine the dangers of the Antiochene — what was then called the
“Eastern” way — were clearly revealed. Theodore distinguished two “subjects” in Christ, and for
him the union between them was not a union of personality (though he does employ this expres-
sion in another meaning) but a union of will, of consent; not so much union, indeed, as co-
ordination of the two.
This union was developing and growing . . . Christ as “Perfect Man” grew like all men in
body and soul. He also grew in knowledge and in righteousness. And as He grew He received
new gifts of the Spirit. He struggled, overcame His passions and even His lusts. This was inevit-
able, so Theodore thought, if Christ were really man . . . Theodore concentrated his whole em-
phasis on the human achievement; God only anoints and crowns human freedom.
7

This “ascetic humanism” achieved its final and by now obviously heretical form in Theo-
dore‟s disciple, Nestorius. A brilliant preacher, scholar, and ascetic, he was invited in 428 by
Emperor Theodosius II to be bishop of Constantinople. With a zeal that sometimes went to ex-
tremes, he began a struggle against pagans and heretics and also a moral reform of the clergy of
the capital. His passionate nature immediately made him enemies, among whom was the empe-
ror‟s sister Pulcheria. Hostility to the bishop increased and spread far beyond Constantinople;
naturally, everything that happened in the capital had empire-wide echoes.
Nestorius wanted to purify the great city of heresies. He took up arms in particular
against calling the Virgin Mary Theotokos, or “Birth-Giver of God,” a term which had long since
come into liturgical use. Theodore of Mopsuestia had also rejected it: “It is madness to say that
God was born of a virgin,” he said. “He who had the nature of the virgin was born of the Virgin,
not God the Word. . . He who was of the seed of David was born of a Virgin.” By this term,
however, even before any more precise theological definition, the Church had expressed its faith
in the absolute union of God and man in Christ. All that was said of the Man was said of God,
too, and vice versa; this was the meaning of the evangelical assertion: “And the Word was made
flesh.”
Nestorius was opposed by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria. Representing the Alexandrian
theological tendency in his habits and methods, Cyril also inherited the theological clear-
sightedness so forcefully revealed in Athanasius. He continued the tradition stemming from Ig-
natius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, according to which the inner standard and criterion of
theology was recognized to be the Church‟s experience of salvation by Christ and in Christ. In
the same way every theological construction, inevitably abstract to the extent that it used words

64
and concepts, should be checked by its “existential” importance as by a tuning fork in order to
discover whether it revealed or in any way diminished the salvation (not the knowledge) the
Gospel proclaimed.
Cyril was a passionate man, a fighter. He did not always discriminate in his means of
combat, and frequently did not find the right words, but he always had a true sense of the danger
in the issue and gave himself wholly to defense of the truth. In the preaching of Nestorius he
immediately discerned a basic distortion of the meaning of Christianity. Cyril felt that the whole
essence of salvation lay in the unity of God and man in Christ, that unique Personality in whom
all men come in touch with the Father, and He perceived a diminution and denial of this in the
Nestorian rejection of Theotokos. He immediately took up a defense of the term in his Epistle to
the Monks and later in a direct appeal to Nestorius, begging him to put a stop to the “universal
scandal” he had caused.
Constantinople greeted this protest with displeasure. There the sad case of Chrysostom
was still well remembered; the bishop of Constantinople had been condemned unjustly and with-
out a hearing by a council under the chairmanship of Theophilus of Alexandria, Cyril‟s uncle,
and Cyril himself had taken part in the condemnation. Those were the years when the bishops of
Alexandria had tried to put a limit to the uninterrupted growth of Constantinople‟s ecclesiastical
influence. The capital had reason to fear the powerful, abrupt, and influential Cyril. Theological
dispute was again complicated by Church politics.

Third Ecumenical Council.
While Cyril continued to expose Nestorius, at first in letters to him, such as his celebrated
Dogmatic Epistle, and later in special theological works, Nestorius took advantage of the com-
plaints of certain Alexandrian clerics against their bishop and planned to have him condemned at
an ecclesiastical court. Cyril‟s personality and his unlimited authority throughout all Egypt had
won him many enemies. Instead of giving a theological answer to a theological accusation, Nes-
torius simply attempted to crush him with the support of the emperor, the weak-willed and inde-
cisive Theodosius II. Perceiving the danger, Cyril turned to Rome. There Nestorius was already
disliked for his one-sided support, given without consultation with Rome, of the Pelagians, heret-
ics who were disturbing the Christian West at the time. Cyril sent examples of Nestorius‟ teach-
ings to Pope Celestine; they were sharply condemned by the local expert on Eastern matters,
John Cassian, an abbot of Marseilles. In August 430 a council of bishops under the leadership of
the pope condemned the doctrine of Nestorius. The bishop of Constantinople was given ten days
from the time he received the Roman decision to recant from his errors.
This decision was transmitted to Constantinople through Cyril, whom the Pope empo-
wered to be his representative. When he had learned the decision of the Roman council, Cyril
convened his own bishops in Alexandria, who of course confirmed the condemnation of Nesto-
rian doctrine. The council also approved a formula of recantation in the form of twelve “anathe-
mas” which Cyril had composed for Nestorius. All this material was sent to Nestorius and to the
bishops of the main Eastern churches — John of Antioch, Juvenal of Jerusalem, Acacius of Be-
rea, and other friends of Nestorius and followers of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Meanwhile, Nesto-
rius, in order to parry what seemed to him a new attack by the ambitious Alexandrian, who had
converted even Rome to his side, persuaded the emperor to summon an ecumenical council. The
sacra, or summons, of the emperor, sent out to the bishops in November 430, called them to
Ephesus on Pentecost of the following year.

65
Outwardly the history of the Third Ecumenical Council was tragic. It met in an atmos-
phere of mutual suspicions, offenses, and misunderstanding. Again, as in the Arian dispute, it
was not a simple conflict of black and white, of heresy against orthodoxy; there was also a real
misunderstanding due to different shades of thought and use of words. Again the synthesis had to
be arrived at by lengthy and tormenting analysis, the gradual process of finding a meeting ground
between words and traditions.
The Eastern bishops, under the leadership of John of Antioch, attacked Cyril although
they, too, were disturbed and frightened by the extreme and provocative conclusions drawn by
Nestorius from the premises with which they were familiar. They did not take their position
simply out of friendship for Nestorius; Cyril‟s language and theology seemed to them plainly
unacceptable. His twelve anathemas then led to a storm of protests and condemnations in Syria.
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, leading light of Antiochene theology, was especially outspoken against
them.
The criticism of Nestorianism which was developed by St. Cyril of Alexandria did not
convince the “Easterners,” but alarmed them. This did not mean that they were all extreme Nes-
torians, but that they feared the opposite extreme. It must be recognized that St. Cyril could not
find words, which were above dispute and did not give precise definitions. His theological expe-
rience was not confused or ambiguous, but for all his theological perspicacity he did not have the
great gift of words, which had so distinguished the great Cappadocians.
8

One theological formula he used was especially dangerous and later condemned: “One
nature of God the Word Incarnate.” Cyril thought this was a quotation from Athanasius the
Great, but the phrase had actually been composed by Apollinarius of Laodicea, already con-
demned by the Church, whose followers, in order to disseminate his views, had signed his works
with the names of undisputed Church authorities. The formula could be interpreted as a denial of
the human nature in Christ, being wholly swallowed up by the divine. According to this doctrine
(the Easterners thought) man was not saved but consumed in the flaming contact with Deity. It is
understandable, therefore, that the Easterners should gather at Ephesus in alarm; while not whol-
ly in agreement with Nestorius, they came primarily to expose and condemn the heresy of Cyril.
The imperial letter summoning them had been couched in language sharply hostile to Cyril. “Es-
sentially the council was summoned against Cyril,” writes Mgr. Duchesne.
9
This must be kept in
mind for a fair judgment of his conduct there. It has been subject to criticism even by Orthodox
historians, for whom St. Cyril is one of the greatest Fathers and teachers of the Church. Some
historians have tried to rehabilitate Nestorius,
10
and in modern literature about Ephesus he is fre-
quently depicted as a martyr, with Cyril as his persecutor, who condemned his enemy in his ab-
sence. But we must remember that when Cyril arrived in Ephesus with his bishops, he encoun-
tered obvious support for Nestorius among the imperial officials who had been entrusted with
organizing the council. Cyril wanted a theological solution. They were preparing to condemn and
depose him, not on theological grounds, but simply for “disciplinary” reasons and with the open
encouragement of state authorities.
Two weeks passed in waiting for the Easterners; the Roman legates were also late. The
mood became more intense and uneasiness spread in the city. Cyril decided to wait no longer and

66
on June 22 opened the council, despite the disapproval of the imperial officials and a protest
signed by sixty-eight bishops supporting Nestorius. Thus it was a council of Cyril‟s supporters
alone. But the population of the city, led by Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, supported him. Nesto-
rius, also in Ephesus, was sent three summonses to appear. He rejected them; from an accuser he
had suddenly become the accused. Then Cyril proceeded to a trial in absentia; the bishops ap-
proved his writings against Nestorius and the bishop of Constantinople was unanimously con-
demned. The emperor‟s representative, Candidian, protested, but feared to act openly since the
whole city was for Cyril. When the bishops emerged from the church where they had been in
session until late at night condemning Nestorius, they were met by an immense crowd with flar-
ing torches and escorted home in triumph.
Four days later the caravan of Easterners finally arrived. Indignant at what had happened,
they immediately formed their own council and condemned and deposed Cyril and his supporters
for heresy and disturbing the peace of the Church. Although they did not even enter into com-
munion with Nestorius, the rebellion became an open one. When it was all over the Roman le-
gate, who arrived last, joined Cyril, and reaffirmed the condemnation of Nestorius.
Cyril‟s council held several more sessions. It affirmed the Nicene Creed, forbidding any-
thing to be added to it. This was to be the argument used by the Orthodox against the addition in
the West of Filioque (“and from the Son”) to the description of the Holy Spirit, “which procee-
deth from the Father.” It forbade the creation of new creeds and solved several canonical prob-
lems; among others it recognized the ecclesiastical independence of the Church of Cyprus from
Antioch, to which it had been previously subordinated.
Both sides, and Candidian as well, sent reports of all the proceedings to the emperor.
Each tried to represent the matter in the most advantageously partisan light. We have seen that
the sympathies of Theodosius had been with Nestorius and the Easterners, but now the mood in
Constantinople began to shift. Church members expressed themselves more clearly as opposed to
him and processions of monks in the capital demanded his condemnation. Even his friends, who
were indignant at Cyril‟s procedure, silently accepted his condemnation. It can be truly said that
the condemnation of Nestorius was accepted by the whole Church.
But for the Easterners the main problem was not that of Nestorius but of what seemed to
them an even more vicious heresy, the doctrine of Cyril himself. The emperor wavered. His first
reaction was typical. He wished to restore peace by removing the controversial individual from
each camp: Nestorius and Cyril. The state would never understand that such methods were in-
evitably doomed to failure. He then summoned representatives of both parties to Constantinople,
but no agreement could be reached between them. Then Nestorius himself resigned from his see,
thus permitting the election as his successor of someone acceptable to all. Cyril, ignoring the
emperor, simply returned to Alexandria, where he was under the protection of a devoted follow-
ing and any attempt to touch him would result in popular rebellion. The powerless Theodosius
had no recourse but to recognize the facts and be reconciled to the division.
The freedom thus granted to the Church proved beneficial. Although at first there were
insults and mutual excommunications, men were found who were able to rise above personalities
and party solidarity. The century-old bishop Acacius of Berea wrote to Cyril, proposing that he
forget the polemical aspects of the case so that the problem could be solved in its essence. Could
an interpretation of Cyril‟s theology be found that would be acceptable for Easterners? Again
there were lengthy statements of faith; both sides were sincere, but behind each stood the phan-
tom of heresy. Cyril‟s explanations satisfied many, and late in the year 432 Paul of Emesa was
sent to Alexandria from Antioch with an expression of the faith of the East which Cyril in turn

67
accepted. Now peace could be restored. Cyril entered into communion with Paul, and the latter
returned home with the signed formula of union.
Gradually most of the Easterners also signed it, and in 433 communion between Egypt
and Syria was re-established. The formula of union “was, strictly speaking, the dogmatic result
and epilogue of the Council of Ephesus. This formula was composed in the theological language
of Antioch . . . but the borderline between orthodoxy and Nestorianism is therefore all the more
clearly expressed.”
11
It was the victory of orthodoxy over both extremes: Christ was “complete
God and complete man . . . He is of one nature with the Father in divinity and of one nature with
us in humanity, for a union of the two natures has been made; therefore we confess one Christ,
one Son, one Lord ... we confess that the Holy Virgin is Theotokos because God the Word was
made flesh and became man, and from her conception united with Himself the temple received
from Her.”
This was the language of Antioch, but in accepting it Cyril conceded nothing for which
he had fought. The confession of one Person in Christ was positively expressed, and the saving
faith in the real union of God and man in one Person was protected.
Such was the orthodox epilogue of Ephesus. The storm died down, although slowly and
painfully. Nestorius languished in a remote Libyan oasis, the insults he had suffered unforgotten.
Nevertheless, despite Cyril‟s intensity and sometimes unhappy choice of words, truth had tri-
umphed. The Church had little time, however, to enjoy its victory.

The Monophysite Heresy.
Nestorianism had been overcome rather easily. It had been defended only by the leaders
of the school of Antioch, who feared the extremes of Alexandrianism more than they sympa-
thized with Nestorius. As for the mass of Christians, they had long been more aware of the divin-
ity of Christ than of His humanity, and they experienced the mystery of the Incarnation more as a
manifestation of God than as a free and complete union of man with Him — a union in which
God and man remained distinct. The condemnation of Nestorius, therefore, only accelerated the
process which had been perceptible from the very start of the Christological dispute, and led to
the formulation of the most significant — and in its consequences for the Church — tragic here-
sy of the time: Monophysitism.
We already know that in his dispute with Nestorius Cyril had used a doubtful definition
of Christ as “One nature of God the Word Incarnate.” To Cyril this did not mean a merging of
God and man, but only the real fact of their union in one Person or personality. He was thus able
to recognize and accept the truth of the Antiochenes and their defense of the complete man in
Christ. For many of his followers, however, this seemed a dethronement of Christ, a humiliation
of God. They interpreted any distinction of two natures in Christ (so essential for a correct un-
derstanding of the Gospel) as a subversion of all Christianity and a denial of that “deification” of
man or ultimate oneness with God, which was the final goal of salvation. “God became man so
that man could become deified,” says St. Athanasius. Particularly in monastic experience of the
struggle against “nature,” against human weakness and sinfulness, it was psychologically very
simple to overstep the line dividing struggle for the true nature of man from struggle against
man, and end with a denial of the essential goodness of human nature. “Deification,” or becom-
ing one with God, began to be seen as the destruction within oneself of everything that is human,
which was regarded as low and unworthy, “a bad smell that soon would pass away.” In such a

11
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 15.

68
context, a theological emphasis on the manhood of Christ became incomprehensible. Did not the
whole joy of Christianity and the whole justification of intense ascetic feats lie in the fact that
Christ was not man, and that each of us has the possibility of overcoming our humanity? Such
were the psychological presuppositions of Monophysitism.
As soon as Cyril died, in 444, an open rebellion broke out against the agreement of 433,
under the slogan of return to an emphasis on Christ‟s “one nature” (mia physis). The signal was
raised in Constantinople by one of the generally recognized authorities of Eastern monasticism,
the archimandrite Eutyches. He affirmed that the humanity assumed by Christ differed from
ours. It was, therefore, irreverent to compare Christ with men, even in respect to his humanity.
Everything “Eastern”
-
seemed detestable to Eutyches; he conducted an immense correspondence,
had influence at court, and tried in every way to expose the Antiochene heresy, especially that of
its main representative, Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Alarm naturally spread throughout the East.
Theodoret presented accusations against Eutyches, but the court was now openly opposed to the
Antiochenes. New persecutions of the Easterners began. By imperial decree, the twelve anathe-
mas of Cyril, which he himself had silently bypassed in the agreement of 433, were proclaimed a
rule of faith. Cyril‟s successor, Dioscurus, systematically prepared for the triumph of Alexandria
and “Alexandrianism” in its extreme form.
Even in Church circles in Constantinople, however, the extreme position of Eutyches
frightened many. At the insistence of Eusebius of Doryleum, who had once been the first to at-
tack Nestorius, the bishops then in the city about their own affairs, under the chairmanship of
Flavian of Constantinople, reviewed the doctrine of Eutyches and were obliged to condemn it as
unorthodox. Eutyches absolutely refused to confess two natures in Christ. According to ancient
custom, he complained to Rome, but Pope Leo the Great, when he learned of the proceedings of
the court, which Flavian had sent him, wholly approved the decision of Constantinople.
The storm began again. Especially indignant were the monks, blind supporters of Cyril,
followers less in spirit than in letter of some of his expressions, which he himself had rejected.
The emperor, still the same weak-willed Theodosius, who inclined toward Eutyches and had not
obtained a reversal of his condemnation from Flavian, decided once more to summon an ecu-
menical council — again in Ephesus. This time there could be no doubt of what he wanted from
the council. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the generally recognized leader of the Antiochene school, was
forbidden to participate and the chairman, appointed ahead of time, was Dioscurus of Alexan-
dria, whose Monophysite sympathies were no secret to anyone. Pope Leo refused to come to the
council, since Attila‟s hordes were then approaching Rome, but he sent two legates and a dog-
matic epistle addressed to Flavian of Constantinople.
What took place in Ephesus on August 8, 449, has been known throughout history as the
“Synod of Robbers.” Everything transpired under conditions of sheer terror. Dioscurus reigned,
relying on the band of fanatic monks who flooded the city. He had what amounted almost to a
formal order from the emperor to acquit Eutyches and destroy all opposition to the doctrine of
the one nature. Under threat of beatings and pressure from the police, all the necessary decisions
were made. Almost no one heard the indignant exclamation of the young Roman deacon: “I pro-

-
Here the term “Eastern” refers, of course, to Syria and Antioch, as often during the disputes of
these centuries, according to the regional divisions noted on p. 116. The broader perspectives of
East and West—Byzantium and Rome, or Asia and Europe—are also intended where appropri-
ate, it is hoped without confusion to the reader. Thus Eastern monasticism, mentioned just above,
refers to the Orthodox Byzantine tradition as contrasted with Rome and the West.

69
test!” Half dead from beatings, Flavian still managed to write a letter to the Pope; he was de-
posed and exiled. The rest, giving way to force, signed. The Church had never before expe-
rienced such shame. The emperor ratified this disgrace with state sanctions, and all the enemies
of Eutyches started on the bitter road of exile. Again force and heresy triumphed over the Eastern
Church.
Evil can only act by force, however, and sooner or later it is itself exposed. Regardless of
all obstacles, the Roman legate Hilarion succeeded in returning to Rome, telling the pope what
had occurred and transmitting Flavian‟s appeal. Shortly afterward came Eusebius of Doryleum
and messengers from Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Leo immediately sent ambassadors to Constanti-
nople demanding from Theodosius a review of the whole matter. By now Theodosius was dead
and had been replaced by his sister, Pulcheria, who in theological matters supported the moderate
policy of the deposed Flavian. In Constantinople the atmosphere immediately changed; there was
an end to the violence of the fanatics. Pulcheria and her husband, the Emperor Marcian, unders-
tood that the time had come once and for all to settle the theological question that had plunged
the Church into such rebellion, and so establish a lasting peace. Another ecumenical council, first
assigned to Nicaea but later transferred to Chalcedon, a suburb of Constantinople, opened there
in the Basilica of St. Euphemia on October 8, 451.

Council of Chalcedon (Fourth Ecumenical Council).
Outwardly the leading role of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon fell to the
share of the Roman legates. The East, again divided and weakened by disputes, accepted the
mediation of Pope Leo. His Dogmatic Tome, written for the council of 449, was accepted as the
norm of orthodox doctrine. This was a moderate policy, combining Cyril‟s thought with the lan-
guage of the Antiochenes. It clearly and precisely confessed two natures m Christ. The same pol-
icy was supported by the imperial couple‟s representatives, who conducted the debates, but this
time without imposing their theology. After accepting Leo‟s epistle as the rule of faith, the coun-
cil in several stormy sessions condemned the action in Ephesus in 449 and those chiefly respon-
sible for it, especially Dioscurus. Most of the bishops considered their task finished, but the em-
peror and the legates demanded a Horos — a general obligatory and clearly ecumenical creed.
Almost against the will of the council, a commission was appointed on which both theological
schools were represented, as well as the Roman legates. It was this commission that presented to
the council the famous text of the dogma of Chalcedon:
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and
the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood;
truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial [homoousion] with the
Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all
things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead,
and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God
[Theotokos], according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, in
two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of natures be-
ing by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved,
and concurring in one person [prosopon] and one substance [hypostasis], not parted or divided
into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus
Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself has taught us, and the creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us.

70
Two natures in union “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” Even one
untried in theology and philosophy inevitably senses that in these words was found at last the
golden rule for which the Church had so earnestly longed. The words are all negative — what
can human language say of the mystery of Christ‟s Being? But this negative definition has an
inexhaustible religious meaning: it guards, describes, and expresses forever what composes the
very essence of Christianity, the joyous mystery of the Gospel. God is united with man, but in
that union man is preserved in all his fullness; he is in no way diminished. And now God is
wholly in him: one Person, one Mind, one striving. This is the meaning of God-Manhood; the
Chalcedonian dogma gave mankind a new measure. What might seem outwardly a mere rhetori-
cal balance of words expressed in fact the faith, hope, and love of the Church, the moving force
of all our Christian life. God comes to man, not to diminish him, but to make the divine Person
human.
The Horos of Chalcedon ended the dialectical opposition of Antioch and Alexandria. Af-
ter the “thesis” and “antithesis” came this synthesis, from which a new chapter emerged in the
history of Orthodox theology, that of Byzantium. Chalcedon is the theological formula of histor-
ical Orthodoxy. Expressed once more in Antiochene language, in a paradoxical way it reveals the
faith of Cyril of Alexandria, who remains the forerunner of Chalcedon and the great teacher of
the meaning of divine Incarnation. The historical limitations of each school were burned away
and the ambiguity and inadequacy of words overcome. All Orthodox theology flows from the
“miracle” of Chalcedon, and unendingly reveals and interprets that source.
Incidentally, the Council of Chalcedon was a triumph for Constantinople, whose primacy
as a center of the Christian Church was finally confirmed in the famous twenty-eighth canon.
After confirming the third rule of the Second Ecumenical Council, “in view of the fact that the
city is honored by the presence of the Emperor and the Senate,” the canon also introduced a new
element: from now on the bishop of Constantinople was allotted the dioceses of Pontus, Asia,
and Thrace, and the bishops of barbarian peoples subject to these dioceses. In this way the two
systems outlined earlier found a formal co-ordination: Constantinople became the center of a de-
finite region, or patriarchate as it was later called, like Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem,
which was also elevated at Chalcedon. It likewise retained its primacy of honor over the more
ancient sees, in recognition of its civic significance. Nothing shows better the spirit of this evolu-
tion than the episcopal synod, which developed literally by itself in these years around the arch-
bishop of Constantinople. Bishops from the provinces would come to the capital on business, and
the practice arose of convening them to review various ecclesiastical matters. This was the seed
of future patriarchal synods, the first budding of a completely new, centralized concept of the
authority of the first bishop of a region, which became dominant later on. It represented a victory
of the imperial structure of the Church over the last remnants of its pre-Nicene form.
All attempts to halt the growth of the influence and importance of Constantinople proved
useless. Roman historians frequently represent this growth as a deliberate policy on the part of its
bishops, allegedly ambitious and power-seeking, who intentionally subjected the East to them-
selves. This is a very superficial judgment, however. The fact is, among the bishops of Constan-
tinople at that time we see no special ambition; Gregory the Theologian, St. Nectarius, St. John
Chrysostom, even Nestorius and finally Flavian — none could be compared in ambition with the
popes of Alexandria: Theophilus, Cyril, and Dioscurus. If there was such a policy of expanding
domination, it was of course at Alexandria, not in Constantinople. Some historians do not see
that this growth of Constantinople was inevitable and would have taken place even if all its bi-
shops had been like Gregory the Theologian, whose modesty and kindness hindered him from

71
discerning that Maxim the Cynic was a sinister adventurer. The roots of the development lay
deep in the very foundations of the new vision of a Christian oekumene.
Alexandria‟s last and hopeless attempt to retain its hegemony had been the Synod of
Robbers at Ephesus in 449, two years before Chalcedon, of which the disgrace inevitably made
reaction against it all the stronger. Antioch had been weakened and deposed by Nestorianism;
now it was Alexandria‟s turn.

Reaction to Chalcedon — the Road to Division.
The proclamation of Chalcedonian dogma, like that of Nicaea before it, long preceded its
actual acceptance by the mind of the Church. While Nicaea triumphed in the end over the whole
Church, Chalcedon unfortunately led to a separation of the churches on the historical plane that
continues to the present day.
We have seen earlier the psychological and religious roots of Monophysitism. For the
overwhelming majority of Christians today the doctrines of the Trinity and of two natures in
Christ remain abstract formulas which do not play a significant role in personal belief; at the
time, however, the Chalcedonian definition seemed to many a real apostasy from earlier religious
experience. When one adds that it was composed in the sober language of the Antiochenes, that
the council acquitted and received into communion the chief enemy of Eutyches and the former
friend of Nestorius, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and that it solemnly condemned the Alexandrian
archbishop Dioscurus, one can understand why it inevitably provoked historic reactions. Actual-
ly the decisions of the council rejoiced only a small handful of Antiochenes and the Roman le-
gates. It was accepted by the moderates in Constantinople. In Egypt, however, it seemed a be-
trayal of the precepts of the great Cyril. Now the Syrian monks joined the Egyptians. Chalcedon
was a rehabilitation of Nestorius! Under this slogan the monastic movement against the council,
pulling with it the mass of believers, immediately assumed threatening proportions.
The echoes and tragic consequences of this reaction cannot be explained by theological
and psychological causes alone. Behind the Monophysite crisis lay something more than a mere
relapse into the more extreme delusions of the Alexandrians. Its importance in the history of Or-
thodoxy was great because it revealed all the contradictions and — to speak frankly — the temp-
tations inherent in the union of the Church with the Roman Empire under Constantine. While
Chalcedon was spiritually and theologically indeed a miracle, an inexhaustible source of theolog-
ical inspiration, it marked a sharp break in the relations between Church and state and in the his-
tory of the Christian world.
All this must be kept in mind in order to understand the significance of the reaction
against it in the East. The council represented a triumph, not only of absolute, objective, timeless
truth, but also of the faith of the empire, the faith of Constantinople. If the empire had really been
what it proclaimed itself to be — what the best men of the time envisioned it to be, a universal,
supranational Christian state — this triumph of imperial orthodoxy and of Constantinople would
have been thoroughly justified, both historically and ecclesiastically. But unfortunately here, too,
the discrepancy between theory and practice was fairly acute. The unity of the empire, culturally
and psychologically, must not be exaggerated. Official documents have preserved for us its con-
cept of itself, but if we depart from them the picture is completely different and, to be candid, a
sad one. Beneath a thin layer of Hellenism and Hellenistic culture, established in the cities and
among intellectuals, the old national passions continued to seethe and ancient traditions lived on.
In the outskirts of Antioch, John Chrysostom was obliged to preach in Syrian; Greek was no
longer understood there. Modern research demonstrates with increasing clarity that the Syrian

72
and Coptic masses felt the power of the empire to be a hated yoke. Moreover, in the eastern part
of it an output of Syrian Christian writings appeared, stemming of course from the Greek but
showing the possibility of independent development. One need mention only the name of St.
Ephraim the Syrian in the fourth century to feel the depth and potential of this “Eastern” version
of Christianity.
The main source of nourishment for the reaction against Chalcedon and for Monophysit-
ism was monasticism. In its origins least of all connected with Hellenism, this movement was
nourished in the fourth and fifth centuries primarily by local national elements — Syrian and
Coptic — in Syria and Egypt. In the support the monks gave Athanasius when in hiding from the
police, we may perhaps discern a tinge of the defense of one‟s own man against outsiders. When
they backed Cyril and rioted at the Synod of Robbers, the monks were openly defending their
own Church from the alien imperial center that was creeping in on them. The struggle against
Chalcedon, aside from its theological significance, now acquired new importance, both religious
and political. The ethnic passions that had seethed beneath the surface found an outlet in Mono-
physitism, and the struggle against “two natures” threatened to turn into a rebellion against the
empire itself.
When the bishops returned from Chalcedon, they were met in many places by popular
opposition. In order to bring the Patriarch Juvenal to his city of Jerusalem, troops had to inter-
vene. In Alexandria the soldiers who were guarding Patriarch Proterius, appointed by Constanti-
nople to replace the deposed Dioscurus, were locked in the Caesareum by an inflamed mob and
burned alive. At first the government resorted to force and tried to impose the terms of Chalce-
don, but when Marcian, last representative of the dynasty of Theodosius the Great, died in 457,
there began a period of compromises with the Monophysites.
For two centuries this problem was dominant in imperial politics. In Alexandria in March
457 the people elected their own Monophysite patriarch, Timothy Aelurus, and Proterius was
killed. In 475 the Monophysites controlled the seat of Antioch as well, and elected a certain Peter
the Fuller to occupy it. The authorities understood that behind Monophysitism stood immense
popular forces which threatened the political unity of the empire. Also in 475 the usurper Basi-
liscus, who had driven out Emperor Zeno for a short time, published his Encyclion, which in fact
condemned Chalcedon, and required the bishops to sign it. From five to seven hundred of them
did so! Zeno, after returning to power in 476, at first supported Chalcedonian orthodoxy, but un-
der the influence of the patriarch of Constantinople, Acacius, and in view of the undiminishing
growth of Monophysitism in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, in 482 he published his Henoticon, a
dogmatic decree in which he rejected both the Tome of Leo and the creedal definition of Chalce-
don without naming them. The Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria and Antioch signed it, but
the people refused to follow them; in Alexandria alone a crowd of thirty thousand monks de-
manded that the patriarch repudiate the Henoticon. More important, the emperor, by accepting
the signatures of the hierarchs of these cities, recognized their legitimacy.
There was a Chalcedonian patriarch in Alexandria as well, however (appointed to suc-
ceed Proterius), and he then appealed to Rome. Pope Felix III demanded that Acacius of Con-
stantinople, leader of the policy of compromise, should accept outright the dogma of Chalcedon
and Leo‟s epistle. This failing, he solemnly deposed and excommunicated Acacius in July 484,
and so began the first schism with Rome, which lasted for about thirty years until 518. Thus, by
trying to preserve the Monophysite East, Constantinople lost the orthodox West; the “schism of
Acacius” was one link in the long chain of disagreements that led to final separation. Emperor
Anastasius I (491-518) openly supported the Monophysites; in 496 he deposed the patriarch of

73
Constantinople, Euphemius, for refusing to compromise with the Monophysite patriarch of
Alexandria. In 511 Macedonius of Constantinople shared a like fate for faithfulness to Chalcedon
and was replaced by the declared Monophysite Timothy. In 512 Anastasius appointed to the seat
of Antioch the leading Monophysite theologian, Severus of Antioch, who solemnly condemned
Chalcedon at the Council of Tyre in 518. Every year the division between orthodox and Mono-
physites became more profound and impossible to retrieve. In Palestine and Syria, it is true,
some of the monks under the leadership of St. Sabas, founder of the famous Palestinian monas-
tery, remained faithful to orthodoxy and did not recognize the Monophysite hierarchy, but the
main mass of Syrians and practically all Egypt were ready prey to heresy. It was not by chance
that the orthodox there received the name of Melkites or emperor‟s men.
Chalcedon represented a theological synthesis, but not an imperial one. The Monophysite
schism demonstrated with increasing clarity that the price paid for the union of Church and em-
pire — or rather, the price paid by the Church for the sins of the empire — was the first great
tragedy of the young Christian world.

Last Dream of Rome.
The forty-year reign of Justinian (527-65) represented the last attempt of an emperor to
preserve the unity of the Roman “universe,” the climax and apogee of that world in which dying
antiquity had entered into union with Christianity. From the beginning Justinian was fascinated
by Rome‟s great past, and behind all his policies lay a dream of the former glory of the empire,
of the majesty of imperial power and the mission of Rome, rather than sober recognition of reali-
ty. “We hope that God will return to us the lands which the ancient Romans ruled as far as the
two oceans,” he wrote. But this was a dream. In reality Roman unity no longer existed.
Byzantium, for its part, was increasingly turning its back on the West and shifting its cen-
ter of interest eastward. From the fifth century on, we clearly perceive the progressive orientali-
zation of the empire in its culture, psychology, art, and court ritual. New Christian churches were
arising beyond its borders in Georgia, Armenia, and Persia; the Byzantine mission developed
eastward, and it was characteristic that the break with Rome in 484 did not particularly disturb
anyone in Byzantium. The Church unfortunately submitted to history, and history widened still
further the gulf between the two halves of what had once been a united oekumene. The fact is,
although the East was connected by organic succession with Rome, a new Byzantine world had
developed, while the Roman West under barbarian attack plunged deeper and deeper into the
chaos of those Dark Ages from which Roman-Germanic Europe would later emerge.
The beginning of the barbarian invasions, the great migration of peoples, was marked in
355 by the appearance of the Huns in eastern Europe. Under their onslaught the Germanic tribes,
which had settled there began to break through the borders of the empire. The eastern region was
saved by Theodosius the Great. Repelled from the south, the German tribes moved west. The
first wave at the beginning of the fifth century rolled as far as Rome, but was beaten off. Never-
theless, the barbarians gained a foothold within the empire. The Visigoths in Italy, the Vandals in
Africa, and the Franks in Gaul as “allies” recognized Roman rule, and the victory over the Huns
on the Catalonian plain in 451 may still be regarded as a Roman victory. But Rome itself was
falling apart; betrayals, conspiracies, and murders, one after the other, pursued the helpless
Western emperors, and in 476 the last of them ignominiously disappeared. In 493 Theodoric‟s
Ostrogoths founded their kingdom in central Italy. Even then, all these peoples continued nomi-
nally to recognize the supreme and sacred authority of the Byzantine emperor, and their prince-

74
lings willingly accepted empty court titles from Constantinople; nevertheless, the West was
plunging into barbarism and darkness.
This history of decay was just what Justinian did not recognize. His whole mind, life, and
actions were controlled by the Roman idea in all its universalism. He assumed power at a crucial
period; from the beginning of the sixth century the pressure of the restored Persian empire on
Byzantium had increased, and his vital interest demanded that he concentrate all his forces on the
East, as the events of the next century showed so clearly. Justinian bought off the Persians, how-
ever, and threw his armies westward under the command of Belisarius. In 534 Africa was taken
from the Vandals; the next year the Byzantines occupied Sicily, and on December 10, 536, Beli-
sarius entered Rome, which had been abandoned by the Ostrogoth king. The dream had become
reality, and in 559 it was crowned by the restoration of Roman dominion in Spain. When he died,
Justinian believed that the ancient unity of the empire had been restored.
He wanted not only external but internal restoration as well. The very first years of his
reign were marked by a colossal systematization of Roman law, known as the “Code of Justi-
nian.” Its reputation has not been exaggerated; Justinian‟s Code preserved the heritage of Roman
law and made it the foundation of the new world born out of the decay of the empire, thus estab-
lishing our historical origins. Finally, alongside this juridical work went a profound administra-
tive and financial reform. The empire again found its strong state structure. Justinian was the last
great Roman emperor.

Justinian and the Church.
One cannot understand Justinian‟s significance in history, especially in the history of the
Church, without understanding that he was also the first ideologist of the Christian empire, who
brought the union of Constantine to its logical conclusion. In his reign occurred the first synthe-
sis of Christian Byzantinism, and this in turn was to define the whole future course of Eastern
Orthodoxy.
Justinian never distinguished Roman state tradition from Christianity. He considered
himself to be completely and fully the Roman emperor and just as organically a Christian empe-
ror. Here lay the source of his whole theory, in the unity of the empire and the Christian religion,
which to him was self-evident and completely indivisible. But here, too, may be found the ambi-
guity and, one must frankly admit, the inner fallacy of his theory. On the one hand it demonstrat-
ed that the mind of the empire had undoubtedly changed under the influence of Christianity; Jus-
tinian always felt himself to be the servant of God and the executor of His will, and the empire to
be the instrument of God‟s plan in the world. The empire had placed itself irrevocably under the
symbol of the Cross, and its purpose was to guard and spread Christianity among men. Justi-
nian‟s interest in missionary work, his contributions to Church charity, and his generous material
support of the Church must never be forgotten or minimized, nor can his sincere faith and ge-
nuine interest in theology (which was not merely political) be denied. His Code deliberately
opens with a confession of the “Catholic faith” in Christ and the Holy Trinity, and on the pre-
cious throne of St. Sophia, the symbol, heart, and protection of the empire, are engraved the
words: “Thine own of Thine own are offered Thee by Justinian and Theodora.” In a certain sense
they actually express the mind and inspiration of the emperor. The empire now belonged wholly
to the Christian God.
Most Orthodox historians, however, do not perceive the tragic flaw in Justinian‟s theory.
Some of them — those who are hostile to Byzantium on the whole — consider him a theoreti-
cian of caesaropapism, the subordination of the Church to the state, and regard this as the source

75
of all evils in the history of the Orthodox East. Others, on the contrary, see him as the creator of
a “symphony,” a truly Orthodox theory of relations between Church and state, and interpret the
errors and violence of his reign as inevitable earthly shortcomings. But the fatal element of Justi-
nian‟s theory lies in the fact that there is simply no place for the Church in it. By planting Chris-
tianity sincerely and deeply at the heart of all his official acts, the great emperor actually ma-
naged not to see the Church, and therefore based his whole concept of the Christian world on
false presuppositions.
One must hasten to admit that the word “Church” is encountered innumerable times in his
writings, and that he defined the mission of the pious emperor to be “the maintenance of the
Christian faith in its purity and the protection of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church from
any disturbance.” But what was the real situation behind these words?

Two Communities.
We know that in the minds of Christians from the beginning the Church had been a new
community, a new people of God, created through the sacramental new birth by water and the
Spirit. This birth had given Christian life a new dimension. It had introduced it into a Kingdom
that was not of this world, and had brought it into communion with the life of the world to come,
still concealed from sight, so that while remaining on this present earth the Christian became a
citizen of another world as well, through the Church. “You have died and your life is hidden with
Christ in God.” The Church, in other words, had been divided from the world not by persecution
or rejection alone, but by the incompatibility of its most sacred essence with anything earthly.
As late as the fourth century the borderline between the Church and the world had been
clear; by no means all believers accepted baptism, so strong was the awareness of the break con-
nected with this sacrament. St. Basil the Great, for example, was baptized as an adult, and St.
John Chrysostom denounced those who put off baptism, thus postponing the time when they
would part with their “pleasant” lives. By the fifth century, however, this external borderline
gradually began to be effaced; the Christian community increasingly coincided with Byzantine
society as a whole. Yet still in the doctrine and mind of the Church the principle remained invi-
olate that the Church is a community “not of this world,” as distinct from a “natural” community,
and if we explore the text of the liturgy we see that it still remains a closed assembly of the faith-
ful and not a public service which anyone who enters may attend.
The fact that the bounds of the sacramental community of believers coincided with the
bounds of the natural community — an inevitable result of the acceptance of Christianity by the
whole empire — does not in itself represent a departure from the original teaching of the Church
about itself. Had it not been sent to all men? Its methods of preaching and action among men
changed somewhat; its services developed and became more solemn; the Church embraced hu-
man life more widely; but essentially it remained what it had been and should be, an assembly of
the people of God, summoned primarily to bear witness to the kingdom of God. The Eucharistic
prayer still preserves this eschatological aspiration, and each liturgy proclaims the ultimate
otherworldliness of the Church and its adherence to the age to come.
The coincidence between these two communities meant, however, that from the time of
the Christianization of the empire the boundary between the Church and the world had gradually
shifted from an external one dividing Christian from pagan to an inner one within the Christian
mind itself. The Christian belongs both to the Church and to the world, but he must recognize the
ontological distinction between them. Striving as a Christian to illuminate his whole life with the
light of Christ‟s teachings, he still knows that his final value and final treasure, “the one thing

76
necessary,” is not of this world; it is the kingdom of God, the final union with God, the perfect
joy of eternal life with Christ. He anticipates this joy in the Church, in its assembly, when in the
breaking of bread it “heralds the death of the Lord and confesses His resurrection.” While joined
to the world through each of its members and being itself a part of it, the Church as a whole is
the mystery of the kingdom of God, the anticipation of its coming triumph, and therefore also, in
the final analysis, free and distinct from the world.
All the urging of the preachers and theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries was main-
ly directed toward maintaining in the Church community an awareness of just these two planes
in Christian life. Their efforts explain much about the growing complexity of liturgical ritual and
the growing emphasis on the “awesome” nature of the Sacrament as the appearance in this world
of a Reality that is absolutely other, heavenly, and incommensurable with it. Finally, monastic-
ism by its withdrawal also bore witness to this. By preaching, services of worship, and ascetic-
ism, the Church struggled against the temptation to transform Christianity into a “natural” reli-
gion and merge it completely with the world.
Here lay the deepest of all the misunderstandings between the Church and the empire.
The Roman state could accept the ecclesiastical doctrine of God and Christ comparatively easily
as its official religious doctrine; it could render the Church great help in rooting out paganism
and implanting Christianity; and finally, it could Christianize its own laws to a certain extent.
But it could not really recognize that the Church was a community distinct from itself; it did not
understand the Church‟s ontological independence of the world. The religious absolutism of the
Roman state and the emperor‟s belief that he was the representative of God on earth prevented it.
The trouble was that the conversion to Christianity not only did not weaken but actually streng-
thened this belief and brought it to its logical conclusion. We have seen that the unique feature of
the conversion of Constantine, and its significance for the future, lay in the “directness” of his
election by Christ — in the fact that he “accepted the call like Paul, not from men.” In the mind
of Constantine himself, this had placed the empire in a special position in the sacred history of
salvation and made it the completion and crown of the events that had led through the Old and
New Testaments to the final victory of Christ over the world.
The more the Church coincided in scale with the empire — the more imperceptible be-
came the outward difference in their boundaries — the stronger was the identity between them in
the thinking of the state, under the authority of the autocrat installed by the power of God. Out-
wardly the structure of the Church remained untouched. With the destruction of paganism, the
emperors unconditionally rejected the sacred or priestly functions they had performed in ancient
Rome in consequence of the state‟s theocratic nature. The sacramental, educational, and pastoral
authority of the hierarchy was in no way limited, but on the contrary surrounded by unprecedent-
ed honor and privileges. Only the hierarchy, in theory at least, continued to be the all-powerful
expression of Church faith, and the state recognized that it was obliged to protect, spread, and
confirm the teaching of the Church as established by its councils.
But it is characteristic, and has been overlooked by many historians, that the problem of
relations between Church and state in Byzantium was almost imperceptibly and unconsciously
replaced by the problem of relations between the secular authority and the hierarchy. In the im-
perial conception, the Church had merged with the world, but because this was a Christian world
it had two complementary sources for its existence, structure, and well-being: the emperor and
the priest. In Byzantine literature the comparison of the relations of Church and state to those
between body and soul gradually became classic. The state was conceived to be the body, which
lived because of the presence within it of its soul, the Church. There is a radical distinction, how-

77
ever, between this pattern and the doctrine of the early Church, which it actually never rejected,
since this would have meant rejecting its own life.
The early Church felt it was itself a body, a living organism, a new people, completely
incompatible with any other people or any natural community. Only within this organism and
only in relation to it is there meaning for the work of the hierarchy, whose purpose is to manifest
this unity and transform the Church into the image of Christ Himself. Theoretically all men in
the empire were called and could become members of this body, but even then the world would
not become the Church, because in it and through it men commune with another world, another
life, that which will come in glory only after the end of this one.
In official Byzantine doctrine, however, the state was compared to a body, not in this ear-
ly Christian sense, nor because all subjects of the empire had become Church members. Actually
the figure was derived wholly from pagan premises, which had not been replaced, according to
which the state itself was conceived to be the only community established by God, and embraced
the whole life of man. The visible representative of God within it, who performed His will and
dispensed His blessings, was the emperor. He was obliged to be concerned with both the reli-
gious and the material well-being of his subjects, and his power was not only from God but was
divine in its own nature. The only distinction between this pattern and pagan theocracy was that
the empire, by the choice of its emperor, had found its true God and true religion in Christianity.
Christ had left his authority to forgive, heal, sanctify, and teach to the priests. Therefore they
must be surrounded in the state with special honor, for on them, on their prayers and sacraments,
would depend the prosperity of the empire.
In the early Byzantine way of thinking, what the Church consisted of was the hierarchy,
the dogmas, the services, the Church buildings; all this was indeed the soul of the world, the soul
of the empire. But the idea of the Church as a body or community had dropped out of sight and
was replaced by or exchanged for that of the state. There is no longer a problem of Church and
state, but only one of the relationship between two authorities, the secular and the spiritual, with-
in the state itself. This latter problem is what Justinian deals with in his legislation and religious
policy, and this is the significance of his reign in the history of the Church.

Symphony.
Justinian‟s solution is known in history as the idea of “symphony,” best expressed in his
famous Sixth Novella. “There are two great blessings,” he writes, “gifts of the mercy of the Al-
mighty to men, the priesthood and the empire (sacerdotium et imperium). Each of these blessings
granted to men was established by God and has its own appointed task. But as they proceed from
the same source they also are revealed in unity and co-operative action.” The priesthood controls
divine and heavenly matters, while the empire directs what is human and earthly. But at the same
time the empire takes full care of preserving Church dogmas and the honor of the priesthood.
And the priesthood with the empire directs all public life along ways pleasing to God.
This doctrine might indeed have been “theoretically the best of all that exists,” as one
Russian historian asserts, if the state, proclaimed to be as essential and as great a blessing as the
Church, had really re-evaluated itself in the light of Christian teachings about the world. Chris-
tianity had never denied either the benefit of the state or the possibility that it could be enligh-
tened by the Light of Christ. Yet the meaning of the Church‟s appearance in the world as a
community and a visible organism was that it revealed the limitations of the state, destroying its
claim to absolutism forever, however “sacral” its nature might be; and it was just this sacral qual-
ity that had been the essence of the ancient pagan state. The Church revealed to the world that

78
there are only two absolute, eternal, and sacred values: God and man, and that everything else,
including the state, is first limited by its very nature — by belonging wholly only to this world;
and secondly, is a blessing only to the extent that it serves God‟s plan for man. Therefore the
“enlightenment” of the state means primarily its recognition of its own limitations, its refusal to
regard itself as an absolute value. It was for this enlightenment that Christians had suffered and
died in the era of persecutions, when they rejected the right of the state to subject the whole of
man to itself. Hence the true postulate for a Christian world was not a merging of the Church
with the state but, on the contrary, a distinction between them. For the state is only Christian to
the extent that it does not claim to be everything for man — to define his whole life — but
enables him to be a member as well of another community, another reality, which is alien to the
state although not hostile to it.
The whole drama of Byzantinism lay in the fact that historically this re-evaluation never
took place, either under Constantine or after him. Justinian‟s theory was rooted in the theocratic
mind of pagan empires, for which the state was a sacred and absolute form for the world — its
meaning and justification. One cannot speak of the subordination of the Church to the state, be-
cause for subordination there must be two distinct subjects. But in the theocratic conception there
is not and cannot be anything that is not related to the state, and religion is essentially a state
function. It is even a higher function, which in a certain way subordinates everything else in state
life to itself; but only because the state itself is religious by nature and is the recognized divine
form for the human community. The state is subject to religion; but religion itself has the state as
the goal of its functions, and in this sense is subject to it as the final value, for the sake of which
it exists.
“The well-being of the Church is the defense of the empire” — in these words of Justi-
nian lies the key to his whole theory. He accepts wholly the distinction between imperial and spi-
ritual authority, and regards the latter as the bearer of the truth, with which it is the first duty of
the state to be in harmony. He understands that “empire” and “priesthood” have distinct tasks.
But all this — the distinction between them, the truth, and their distinct assignments — all exist
essentially for the well-being and strengthening and blessing of the empire, the ultimate and ab-
solute value.
It is characteristic that even Justinian‟s love for monasticism, which he proved by found-
ing dozens of monasteries throughout the empire — a monasticism which apparently repudiated
the religious absolutism of the empire by the very fact of its existence — had for him precisely
the same source of inspiration. “If these pure hands and these consecrated souls will pray for the
Empire, its armies will be stronger, the well-being of the state will be greater, fertility and trade
will flourish, due to God‟s undoubted favor.” Even those whose only purpose was to bear wit-
ness “that the image of this world passes,” and that we may use it only “as if not using it,” were
included in this ancient utilitarian conception of religion and became, in the emperor‟s regard, a
source of material (not even spiritual!) well-being for the empire.
In Justinian‟s synthesis the Church appears to dissolve, and the awareness that it is radi-
cally alien to the world and the empire disappears once and for all from state thinking. The first
chapter in the history of the Christian world ends with the victorious return of pagan absolutism.

Reconciliation with Rome — Break with the East.
The fate of the Church itself under Justinian best illustrates the situation just described.
From the very first years of his reign, the emperor demonstrated that he regarded the religious
unity of the empire as just as self-evident and natural as state unity. Stern measures were taken

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against all possible heretical sects, the remnants of ancient schisms and disputes. Justinian re-
solved to settle still more firmly with paganism and with its citadel, the university at Athens,
which had recently been basking in the glory of the last of its great pagan philosophers, Proclus.
In 529 the university was closed and replaced by the first Christian university, in Constantinople.
Campaigns of mass conversion began in the capital and Asia Minor. The few remaining pagans
were obliged to go permanently underground.
When he was still only heir to the throne under Emperor Justin I, Justinian began his reli-
gious policy by a solemn reconciliation with Rome. Even then the plan of restoring the ancient
empire in the West was maturing in his mind. In the chaos that reigned there the only link left
with Byzantium and Roman tradition was the papacy. Its authority was unshakable, even among
the German barbarians, although they belonged officially to Arianism, the heritage of Ulfila the
Goth, who had baptized them in the fourth century at a time when Arianism was triumphant. In
these years of decay and destruction the papacy remained true to the empire, regardless of
strained relations between them. The price of reconciliation between the churches, however, was
the signing by the patriarch and the bishops of a document composed by Pope Hormisdas which
was more violently papistic in content than anything the Eastern Church had ever seen before.
The late Orthodox patriarchs Euphemius and Macedonius, themselves victims of Monophysitism
and already revered as saints in Constantinople, had to be condemned by their own Church,
merely because they had ruled it in 484 when communion between Rome and Constantinople
was sundered. Justinian needed peace with Rome at any price.
He had relied on the papacy to restore his power in the West, and the papacy was unwa-
vering in its loyalty to Pope Leo and the Council of Chalcedon. But the situation in the East
when he ascended the throne in 427 was diametrically opposite. In Egypt the Church belonged
wholly to the Monophysites; in other provinces supporters of the Henoticon — semi-
Monophysites — ruled. The Antiochene Church was headed by the intellectual leader of all Mo-
nophysite theology, Severus. Justin and Justinian first began by attempting to restore the imperial
episcopate to the faith of Chalcedon by force, but the new bishops, appointed and consecrated in
Constantinople, had to occupy their seats with the help of the police. The masses rioted, whole
monasteries had to be dispersed, and curses against the “synodites” resounded everywhere. Only
Palestine was wholly orthodox, except for an insignificant minority. In Syria, in Edessa (an an-
cient town near the Persian border), in the outlying regions of Asia Minor, the Chalcedonian hie-
rarchy was seated by force. Egypt they did not dare to touch at all, and Severus of Antioch and
the other Monophysite leaders went into hiding there.
Shortly afterward, in 531, Justinian sharply changed course and abandoned the use of
force, replacing it by a policy of compromise. Usually this reversal is ascribed to the influence of
his wife Theodora, a secret Monophysite, who constantly helped the persecuted leaders of the
heresy. Other historians mention a unique division of spheres between husband and wife; Justi-
nian‟s support of orthodoxy and Theodora‟s of Monophysitism they claim were a political ma-
neuver to preserve the unity of the empire, by allowing both sides access to imperial power.
Whatever the case, Justinian could not help but comprehend the threatening significance of this
religious division, behind which the separatism of ancient nationalisms was ever more clearly
visible.
The expelled monks were allowed to return to their monasteries. A huge number of them
settled right next door to the emperor himself, where for decades they were a center of secret
Monophysite intrigues around Theodora. The emperor was still counting on a theological agree-
ment. In 533 he arranged a three-day discussion in which twelve theologians participated, six on

80
each side. Despite the peaceful tone and high theological level of the debate, it had no result.
Soon afterward Theodora succeeded in making a certain Anthimus, almost openly a Monophy-
site, patriarch of Constantinople. An encounter with Severus of Antioch, whom the emperor had
managed to entice out of Egypt for theological discussions, completed Justinian‟s apparent con-
version to the Monophysite camp.
Just then, however, the Roman Pope Agapetus himself appeared in Constantinople. The
patriarch‟s heresy was exposed, he disappeared, and the orthodox Menas was elevated to his seat
by the pope‟s own hand. Justinian again changed course. In an edict of 536 Monophysitism was
once more solemnly condemned, the books of Severus of Antioch were removed from circula-
tion, and entry to the capital was forbidden to heretics. He resolved on an even more drastic step:
after so many years of almost official recognition of the Monophysite hierarchy in Egypt, he now
sent an orthodox bishop there with unlimited powers, and a wave of terror once more rolled
through the country.
Now a decisive development took place: the rise of an independent, parallel Monophysite
hierarchy, which changed to a final and irreversible schism what might hitherto have been consi-
dered a theological divergence. There had been parallel patriarchs at times before this. But now
with the help of Theodora a certain Bishop John, exiled for heresy, succeeded in being trans-
ferred to the capital on the pretext of needing medical attention, and here, concealed from the
police by the empress, he began to consecrate priests in his own house. Later he managed to pass
secretly throughout almost all Asia Minor for the same purpose. A little later another secret bi-
shop, Jacob Baradai “the Ragged,” traveled through Syria in the guise of a beggar. On this jour-
ney, with the help of two exiled Egyptian bishops, he consecrated bishops as well. The latter
soon elected their own Monophysite patriarch. The foundation of the “Jacobite” Church (named
after Baradai) was laid, and it exists today. Copts and Syrians thus established their national
Church, and the first permanent division between the churches was complete.
After this neither Justinian nor his successors ever retreated from Chalcedon, and the em-
pire joined its fate with Orthodoxy forever. But is it not tragic that one of the main reasons for
the rejection of Orthodoxy by almost the whole non-Greek East was its hatred for the empire? A
hundred years later the Syrians and Copts would greet their Mohammedan conquerors as saviors;
this was the price the Church paid for the inner dichotomy of the union of Constantine.

Recurrence of Origenism.
Justinian revealed the real extent of his absolutism in the obscure and lengthy history of
the Fifth Ecumenical Council. The outward reasons leading to it may seem fortuitous, and it is
not easy to discern its inner congruity with the gradual crystallization of Orthodox dogma, a con-
gruity which, despite its sad historical appearance, has still preserved ecumenical authority for it
in the mind of the Church.
The council arose from a new dispute over the theology of Origen, who, as we have al-
ready seen, was the first to attempt a synthesis between Christianity and Hellenism. In spite of
the immense influence of the great Alexandrian teacher, certain points in his thought aroused
doubts very early. Even at the end of the third century, Methodius of Olympus was writing
against his doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and the nature of resurrected bodies. A hundred
years later, at the end of the fourth century, Epiphanius of Cyprus, a celebrated exposer of here-
sies, regarded Origen as the source of the Arian subordination of the Son to the Father; at the
same time St. Jerome was also writing against him; and finally, in 400, a council led by Theophi-
lus of Alexandria in that city solemnly condemned the errors of Origenism. For in it Hellenism

81
had fundamentally distorted Christianity, and the struggle against Origen was one aspect of the
critical and difficult Christianization of Hellenism in which, as I have pointed out, we find the
historical meaning of the patristic period. The Church “revised” Origen, discarding from his
teachings what seemed incompatible with its faith and perfecting what seemed valuable and use-
ful.
But the problem or Origen had not been posed on an ecumenical scale, and had been
overcome primarily in theological disputes about the Trinity and God-Manhood, through gradual
refinement of the theological language and hence by a clear theological mastery in Church tradi-
tion. Thus the sudden relapse into Origenism at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of
the sixth was not a matter of chance; it revealed all the strength of Hellenistic themes that had not
been overcome, even in the mind of the Church itself — a constant temptation to rationalize
Christianity. The revival of Origenism must be interpreted in this connection.
It is not accidental that these disputes over Origen, which became so acute under Justi-
nian, were limited almost exclusively to the monastic environment, which had arisen as a way or
method of “practical” incarnation of the evangelical ideal. But very early the ascetic experience
began to be interpreted and to grow into a definite theory. In this, Origen‟s influence was a deci-
sive factor, and not Origen alone, but the whole Alexandrian tradition with its interest in mystical
and spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures, and its ideal of gnosis as a higher way, and “deifica-
tion.” Disputes over Origen arose very early among the monks. According to tradition, St. Pa-
chomius the Great had forbidden his followers to read his works. On the other hand, his influ-
ence may be felt in the Life of Anthony composed by St. Athanasius. Origen attracted Basil the
Great and his friends, founders of monasticism on Greek soil; and without doubt the ascetic
works of Evagrius of Pontus, which were distributed throughout the East on a vast scale and
strongly influenced all later ascetic writing, were directly derived from Origenism. Along with
the adoption of much that was valuable in Alexandrian tradition, its danger too might be dis-
cerned more and more clearly: it lay in the “spiritualization” of Christianity, the very subtle and
innermost “de-incarnation” of man. This was a danger from Greek idealism, which had not been
overcome — the desire to replace “salvation” by contemplation.
At the beginning of the sixth century these disputes and doubts about Origen, which had
never really died down among the monks, overstepped the desert boundaries and attracted the
attention of wider Church circles. In 531 St. Sabas, founder of the famous monastery of Pales-
tine, went to Constantinople to obtain government help for Palestine, which was torn by a Sama-
ritan rebellion. He was accompanied by the monk Leontius, one of the main defenders of Ori-
gen‟s theology in the monastery. In Constantinople Sabas participated in the disputes with the
Monophysites. The Origenism of Leontius was exposed and Sabas was forced to part with him.
Shortly afterward another convinced Origenist, Theodore of Raïthu (a monastery on what
is now the Gulf of Suez), arrived in the capital. He became intimate with Justinian and was ap-
pointed to the important see of Caesarea in Cappadocia. With such protection at court, the Ori-
genists everywhere raised their heads. But just then there came to Palestine on other business an
ecclesiastical delegation from Constantinople, which included the scholarly Roman deacon Pela-
gius, the pope‟s representative or “apocrisiary” in the East. He could not overlook the disputes
among the monks over the name of Origen. In the West Origen had long been considered a heret-
ic, and Pelagius raised an alarm. At his insistence, Patriarch Ephraim of Antioch solemnly con-
demned Origenism. The disturbances arising from this condemnation finally reached Constanti-
nople. Despite all the efforts of Theodore of Raïthu, the emperor, when he had reviewed the
whole matter, issued in 543 in the form of an edict a lengthy and well-grounded condemnation of

82
Origenism, or rather of those aspects of it, which were obviously contradictory to the doctrine of
the Church. All five patriarchs signed this condemnation unconditionally, and there were still
disputes only among the Palestinian monks. Despite the unusualness of a theological definition
by state edict (apparently no one protested against this), Origenism, or its extreme assertions in
any case, had been overcome in the mind of the Church.

Fifth Ecumenical Council.
Paradoxically, the condemnation of Origen was the reason for much more important
events, however. Although he had signed the edict, Theodore of Raïthu had never forgiven Pela-
gius for his interference in these disputes, which resulted in the condemnation of his beloved
teacher. He gave Justinian the idea of condemning also the three late Antiochene theologians
who had been chiefly connected in some way with Nestorianism: Theodore of Mopsuestia,
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa. All three leaders had been absolved at the Council of
Chalcedon as a result of the Alexandrian accusations, and had died at peace with the Church. The
Council of Chalcedon had been a victory from the theological point of view for Pope Leo the
Great, and through him for the whole West. Thus in attacking the three “heads” (or “chapters,”
as the three condemned teachers began to be called, in confusion with the three headings or
chapters of the imperial edict against them), Theodore was insulting the West.
The plots of this dark intriguer are not quite clear to us — did he want a break with Rome
as revenge for its interference with Origenism, or was he trying to strengthen his own position?
Whatever the case, in the same court theological circle which had prepared the edict against Ori-
gen a new document was composed around 544, again in the form of an imperial edict, which
solemnly condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia and those works of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas
of Edessa in which they had disputed with Cyril of Alexandria. The emperor liked the idea, since
the edict might furnish additional proof to the Monophysites that the Orthodox rejected Nesto-
rius, and might bring them back into Orthodoxy at a time when administrative measures against
the Monophysites were growing in strength.
While the condemnation of Origen had not aroused any opposition, the edict of 544
raised a storm. The papal representative Stephen, who had replaced Pelagius, refused outright to
sign it. The four Eastern patriarchs signed only under threat of deposition and exile, and then on
condition that if the Roman pope would not sign it they might revoke their signatures. The empe-
ror had decided to get what he wanted, however. Pope Vigilius was arrested in Rome during a
Church service and placed on a ship for Constantinople. En route, in Sicily he met the archbishop
of Milan and representatives of the African churches; all were extremely opposed to the edict,
regarding it as an open defiance of Chalcedon. He did not reach Constantinople until 547, where
he was met with due solemnity.
Now began a long, sad story, which cannot be passed over in silence. At first Vigilius
adopted an uncompromising position and refused communion to the patriarch and to all who had
signed the edict against the “Three Heads.” Then Justinian began his theological brain-washing.
It must be said that the arguments of the Byzantine theologians were essentially correct. Theo-
dore of Mopsuestia, as we have seen, was undoubtedly more the father of Nestorianism than his
disciple Nestorius himself. On the other hand, if the Church recognized Cyril‟s orthodoxy, the
violent and obviously unjust attacks on him by Theodoret and Ibas undoubtedly merited con-
demnation. The pope referred to their absolution by the Council of Chalcedon. The Council of
Chalcedon, he was answered, had absolved them on the basis of their rejection of Nestorius and
had not discussed their theological writings.

83
Finally the pope gave in and agreed to condemn the Three Heads. But now a further
storm arose in the West, where Pope Vigilius was regarded as an apostate and betrayer of Chal-
cedon. The well-known African theologian, Facundus of Hermiane, published a book In Defense
of the Three Heads, which produced a sensation. Locally council after council opposed the con-
demnation, and in Africa matters went so far that the pope himself was solemnly anathematized.
Justinian realized that the pope‟s signature decided nothing in this case. The frightened Vigilius
begged him to review the whole matter and to summon an ecumenical council for this purpose.
After the emperor had obtained from the pope a written condemnation of the Three Heads, he
ordered preparations for the council. All that had taken place previously was officially annulled.
Justinian understood the preparation for a council in his own way. In Africa, for example,
where opposition to the edict was particularly strong, the main bishops were arrested at the em-
peror‟s order, including the archbishop of Carthage, and replaced by others. Still the outcome of
the council seemed unclear. The emperor decided to alter the initial plan. Instead of reviewing
the whole matter again, as he had promised Vigilius, it was much simpler to demand of the as-
sembled bishops their signatures on a document already prepared. A new edict, with detailed
theological argumentation, was issued and distributed to all the churches. The patriarch of Alex-
andria, who refused to accept it, was immediately exiled and replaced by a new one.
Vigilius refused to recognize this edict, by which the emperor had broken his promise.
Justinian was beginning to lose his temper; sensing the danger, Vigilius and Datius of Milan de-
cided to seek sanctuary in an inviolable refuge, the Church of St. Peter in the papal Palace of
Hormisdas. Here a disgraceful scene took place. On the emperor‟s orders the police broke into
the church to arrest the pope. He resisted so energetically that the columns over the altar col-
lapsed and almost crushed him. The assembled crowd began stormily to express their outrage,
and the police were obliged to withdraw ineffectively. Again there were threats, slander, and pet-
ty but hourly insults and humiliation. In the end several years passed in this way, in the course of
which a vacuum developed around the pope; Datius of Milan died, and the circle of Western
clerics melted away. Still the pope had apparently achieved his goal, the emperor‟s rejection of
the edicts and a free solution of the question.
After endless wavering, the council finally opened in Constantinople on May 5, 553. It
began with a solemn condemnation of Origenism, which still continued to disturb Palestine. The
pope informed the council that while he would not be personally present at the deliberations, he
would send his opinion on the problem of the Three Heads in written form. This lengthy docu-
ment, filled with detailed argument, opened with an unconditional condemnation of the theology
of Theodore of Mopsuestia. As for the man himself, the pope referred to an ancient practice of
the Church not to condemn those who had died at peace with it, leaving this to the judgment of
Christ. The pope refused to condemn Theodoret and Ibas, who had been defended by the Council
of Chalcedon.
This document never reached the bishops. Instead, Justinian presented to the council Vi-
gilius‟ written condemnation of the Three Heads, which he had given the emperor at the begin-
ning of the dispute. Caught in a contradiction, the pope was excluded from the diptychs (his
name no longer mentioned in the liturgy). On June 2 the council finished the condemnation of
the Three Heads by signing fourteen anathemas. No one really defended the documents con-
cerned, and the Eastern Church painlessly accepted the decree of the ecumenical council as
something self-evident.
In the end Vigilius, too, signed. He was not destined to return to Rome, but died on the
way in Syracuse in 555. In the West the council was accepted with difficulty. The main role in its

84
acceptance was played by Vigilius‟ successor, Pelagius, who had been for many years one of the
main opponents of the condemnation of the Three Heads. His long stay in Constantinople had
taught him much, however — perhaps most of all to penetrate behind the historical covering to
the essence of things, and to distinguish the temporal from the eternal.

Underlying Gains.
Temporal aspects of these events were the disgraceful use of force, which revealed what
Justinian meant by “symphony” and how he carried it out; the obsequiousness of too many of the
bishops, which made force almost a legitimate form of imperial administration of the Church;
and the quick resort to excommunications, curses, and schisms on the surface of Church life.
The eternal aspect was the meaning nevertheless revealed in these disputes, which out-
wardly appeared almost fortuitous or even imposed from above. In returning to problems that
seemed already solved, the fathers of the council indeed finished the work of Chalcedon and for
the first time freed its decisions from possible reinterpretation, placing it in its truly Orthodox
theological perspective. It was not accidental that the council condemned simultaneously both
Origen and the most extreme representatives of the school of Antioch. This was the judgment of
the Church, not only of heresy but also of its own past; it revealed completely the defects of both
trends and their one-sidedness within Orthodoxy itself. Neither Antioch nor Alexandria alone
could give an integral, catholic description of the faith of the Church. Chalcedon had been a for-
mula for synthesis, but the formula by itself was inadequate. It had to be revealed in appropriate
concepts, and the whole system of thought and terminology had to be realigned in accordance
with it. This work was performed deep in the mind of the Church.
Justinian had behaved rudely, and much in the history of his reign is darkened forever by
this rudeness and violence. But there was a genuine dispute within the Church about the Eastern
Fathers; their writings were really sharply contradictory to the tradition of Chalcedon. Again, the
dispute about Origen was genuine, not forced on the Church by Justinian. The truth in the solu-
tion of these questions was not Justinian‟s, but the truth and rightness of the decisions and
achievements of the period. This is the only truth the Church recognizes in considering the
Council of 553 as one of the ecumenical councils. And the whole future development of Ortho-
dox theology confirmed it.
The historian inevitably generalizes. But Justinian‟s reign should not be reduced to a
mere triumph of caesaropapism in its Byzantine form. This appears on the surface of Church life,
while behind the seething tumult of events it is sometimes hard to discern the creative processes
developing in the depths. We see monks rioting in the churches and squares of a city, crushing
the Church en masse. From this it is so easy to draw conclusions about their lack of culture, their
fanaticism, their intolerance, as many historians do without hesitation. But we need only open
the monastic literature of these times to find a world of spirituality — such amazing refinement
of the human mind, such perception and holiness, such an all-embracing, wonderful concept of
the final meaning of our life!
Can even Justinian be fitted into his own plan “with nothing left over” beyond his politi-
cal schemes and calculations? Do we not see evidence even today in St. Sophia — a church ded-
icated to wisdom, or meaning, whose very cupola floods the world with an unearthly light — of
something completely different in his dreams and visions? One point is beyond question: it was
in just these decades that Christian culture began to be outlined and filled in. While Justinian‟s
synthesis of Church and state would soon reveal its weakness, this culture of the Incarnate Word,

85
the summit and symbol of which St. Sophia has remained throughout the ages, prevents us from
oversimplifying that complex period.
Finally, we must not forget that in speaking of Church and state Byzantine historians
usually confuse the relations of the state to the Church with those of the Church to the state.
While in practice it is of course very difficult to make a precise distinction between them, it is
extremely important to keep it in mind. The distinguishing feature of those ages was that two
logics, completely different in origin and inspiration, clashed and were kept in precarious bal-
ance; from this came crises, breakdowns, and interruptions. The logic of the Roman theocratic
state we have seen. The other was the Church‟s attitude toward the state, as at once “this world”
— fallen, limited, and destined to be overcome in the final triumph of the kingdom of God —
and the world of God‟s creation, man‟s dwelling, bearing the reflection of heavenly Reason and
sanctified by the grace of Christ. These two logics met and clashed, not on an abstract plane but
in living reality, with all the complexity and variety of factors operating within it. Moreover, they
clashed in the mind of man, splitting it and introducing into it a tension it had not previously
known. As the same people now composed both the world and the Church, conflict and tension
were moved inward and became a problem of human thought, reason, and conscience.
On no account can all this be reduced to a victory of the state and its acceptance by the
Church. Servile bishops leave on the surface of history a larger trace and echo than do Christians
who really reveal the profundity of the Church‟s judgment of the world and the state, but do it
gradually. Yet an attentive eye will perceive the Church‟s struggle for its inner freedom, even in
the years when the empire outwardly triumphed. The emperor could do much, but not every-
thing; a limitation was imposed on his absolutism from within.
This limitation was Christian truth. The abuse of power by the state was largely linked
with the fact that a crystallization of the Church‟s experience and doctrine was going on within
the Church itself, inevitably combined with divisions, disputes, and conflicts. But those who
seemed on one day crushed by state absolutism were glorified on the next as saints, and the em-
pire itself was obliged to revere the heroism of their opposition and their indomitable freedom of
spirit. It is enough to mention once more the names Athanasius, Chrysostom, Euphemius, and
Macedonius. Whatever the pressures of the state in their time, we are able to study and restore
the evolution of Orthodoxy and all the profundity of the faith and experience of the Church —
even if we forget these pressures and do not take them into account. Nicaea and Chalcedon were
triumphant despite the state, which did everything to erase them from the mind of the Church;
they triumphed only by force of the truth immanent in them. When Justinian, just before his
death, indulged once more his personal passion for theologizing and attempted to impose, again
by state edict, the dogma of the incorruptibility of Christ‟s body (a subtle question which divided
the Monophysites at the time), the overwhelming majority of the bishops firmly and decisively
declared that they preferred exile to acceptance of heresy. He died without taking further meas-
ures.
It is true that the problem of limitations on imperial authority within the Church was not
raised in the mind of the Church. It had accepted the embraces of the Christian empire with hope
and faith, and was destined to be crushed in them. The dream of a sacred empire was the dream
of the Church as well for many long centuries. The grandeur of this concept constantly oversha-
dowed its danger, limitations, and ambiguity in the Christian mind. Yet this was not fear or ser-
vility, but faith in the cosmic destiny of the Church and the desire to render unto Christ the king-
dom of the world. Therefore the Church never once betrayed or yielded its ultimate truth, for the
sake of which it had accepted union with the empire.

86

Breakup of the Empire — Rise of Islam.
Although Justinian‟s dream of empire was briefly realized, it was still only a dream; al-
most immediately after his death in 565 the empire began to fall apart. In 568 the wave of the
Lombard invasion swept over Italy, the pressure of the Moors in Africa increased, and war never
ceased in Spain. Islands of Byzantine influence would long be maintained in the West, but one
could no longer speak of a Western empire. The eternal war with Persia, from which Justinian
had ransomed himself in order to free his hands in the West, was renewed in 572. In about twen-
ty years the Persians conquered part of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. In 619 the Per-
sian fleet appeared before Constantinople and a hostile army occupied Chalcedon. From the
north came invasions of Slavs, who were to be one of the main military and political problems of
the empire in later times. In 626, when the Emperor Heraclius was gathering forces far from the
capital to fight against Persia, the Avars, whose empire included the Slavs, surrounded Constan-
tinople, and the Byzantines were to regard their deliverance from this siege as a miracle. The last
favorable turn of events was Heraclius‟ victorious campaign against the Persians in 626-29,
which brought the Byzantine army as far as Ctesiphon and liberated the whole East. In 630 he
ceremoniously returned the Cross of Christ, which had been captured by the Persians, to Jerusa-
lem.
But this was only a breathing spell. That same year, in remote Arabia, which had never
previously been of interest, a band of fanatics around Mohammed conquered Mecca, united the
scattered Arab tribes through the new religion of the one God, and created a source of inspira-
tion, faith, and religious dynamism that became for many centuries the chief and most terrible
rival of Christianity. Mohammed died in 632, and ten years later the empire of his followers in-
cluded Persia, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt. When Heraclius, the last emperor of the still great
empire, was dying in 641, the empire had already lost the whole East forever.
Thus the fate of Byzantium itself in the seventh century was finally decided in the East,
and the emergence of Islam marks the borderline that divided the early empire, which was still
Roman and universal in concept and thinking, from later Byzantium. The empire was becoming
an Eastern state with a population homogeneous in cultural tradition, if not in blood, which lived
under the unceasing pressure of alien worlds. Heraclius began the governmental reform, com-
pleted in the next century, which would enable Byzantium to survive for eight more centuries.
This was the militarization of the state and its adaptation to its new situation as an island sur-
rounded by enemies on all sides.
Still more important was the psychological and cultural evolution of the empire at the
time. It has been defined as the “Hellenization” of Byzantium, but it would be more accurate to
call it a second Hellenization. Rome itself, when it was building its empire, was quite Hellenized,
and its climax in a cultural sense was also the climax of the Hellenistic period of world history.
The Roman Empire performed a sort of synthesis here, and it was truly a Greco-Roman world.
This is quite clear from the history of the Church in the time when it was spreading throughout
the empire. Until the seventh century the state tradition of the empire remained this final Roman
tradition. Although its center was gradually transferred from West to East, and however clear it
became year by year that the West was lost, the empire still continued to be the direct heir of the
principate of Augustus, the Antonines, and Diocletian.
The historians who attribute the final division of the Church wholly to contradictions be-
tween East and West, as a result of a supposed primal and absolute dualism between its Greek
and Latin elements, are not only “naturalizing” Christianity but simply forgetting that it is im-

87
possible to derive any such dualism from the facts. For example, until the third century the lan-
guage of the Roman Church was Greek; the father of all Western theology, St. Augustine, simply
cannot be understood if we forget that he was rooted in Greek philosophy. And finally, the theol-
ogy of the Eastern Fathers — Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Cyril — was accepted and
adopted in the West as completely as the theology of Leo the Great was accepted in the East. On
the other hand, while Latin secular literature and Roman art were born under the influence of
Hellas, Justinian‟s Code was still written in Latin, and Latin was still the official language of the
Byzantine chancellery.
The unity of the Roman world was not destroyed by an internal division between East
and West but by external catastrophe; the movement of peoples who flooded the western half of
the empire and tore it from the East. This split, at first chiefly political and economic, led indeed
to the obvious if gradual individualization of each world and its transformation from a half of an
integrated whole into a self-contained unit, each increasingly inclined to interpret its tradition
and development as a break from the original Roman universalism.
It was at this time that the second Hellenization of Byzantium took place, the beginning
of a development which would finally transform it into a wholly Greek world. It can be traced in
the change in official terminology, when Greek terms were replacing Latin; in the appearance of
Greek inscriptions on coins; and in the change of legislative language from Latin to Greek.
Though the Byzantines styled themselves officially “Romans” up to the downfall of the empire,
the term acquired a completely new meaning. While the break from the West would never be
complete or final, the triumph of Islam defined forever the boundaries of Byzantinism in the
East. All that was not Greek, or was insufficiently Hellenized, fell outside the Byzantine orbit
and opposed it as something alien and hostile.

Decay of the Universal Church
This evolution of Byzantium was immensely significant in the history of Orthodoxy.
First, it meant a transformation of Orthodoxy into something like a national religion for a politi-
cally and culturally limited world. This “national” quality of Byzantine Christianity was still re-
mote from the much later religious nationalism we shall see presently. It meant only a percepti-
ble narrowing of the Church‟s historical horizon and orthodox way of thinking. In viewing the
contrast, one may leave aside the truly universal conception of Irenaeus of Lyons, for example,
and his joy in the unity of the Church throughout the world; and the awareness of the universal
connection between all churches so forcefully revealed in the second and third centuries in the
writings of Cyprian, Firmillian of Caesarea, Dionysius of Alexandria — and in Rome, of course,
where ecumenical interests were never to disappear, although they assumed a new form.
Let us take only the example of the fourth century. This was a time when the union with
the empire stimulated the mind of the Church, which regarded it as the source of a world triumph
of Christianity. We need only recall the promising buds of Syrian Christian literature, mention
the names of Jacob Aphraates, St. Ephraim the Syrian, and later St. Isaac the Syrian, and indicate
the possibilities of Coptic Christianity, so tragically cut off from Orthodoxy by Monophysitism;
or the missions to the Abyssinians, Goths, and Arabs. Even in the difference between trends and
schools, between the psychological profiles of Antioch, Alexandria, and Edessa, so unfortunately
erased by the Christological dispute, were great possibilities for further development and mutual
enrichment of the catholic tradition of the Church.
This is particularly apparent from the large number of Eastern and Egyptian liturgical
rites that have come down to us from the period when the liturgy was not completely uniform

88
according to the Byzantine style. With its victory over the empire, the Church was really begin-
ning to express itself in various cultural traditions, making them part of the Church and in turn
uniting the whole Mediterranean world. This by no means implies, of course, any absolute plu-
ralism of traditions; Syrian and Coptic theologians remained within the framework of the same
Christian Hellenism that had been the historic flesh of Christianity itself from New Testament
times. Still, it made possible the enrichment of this Hellenism, as did the later injection of the
Slavic element and its development into Russian Orthodoxy and Russian culture.
The expansion of Islam cut off all these developments. But it is important to keep in mind
that the psychological decay of universalism had begun even before this — that in the Christo-
logical dispute the East was torn from Byzantine Orthodoxy, preferring the historical and theo-
logical dead ends of Monophysitism and Nestorianism to enslavement under the Orthodox em-
pire. From this point of view the victory of Islam itself must be seen in relation to the first deep
religious and political crisis in the Christian world: the first break on the historic way of Ortho-
doxy.

Last Efforts: Monothelitism.
On the plane of the state and politics, therefore, the last imperial attempt to restore the
religious unity of the empire by bringing the Monophysites back into the fold of the Orthodox
Church was ineffective and too late. This was “Monothelitism,” a dispute over the will of Christ,
which the Emperor Heraclius had raised and which was a source of new disagreements and vi-
olence. It finally resulted in a new victory for Orthodoxy — the final step in the Christological
dialectic. Although it was brought up for political reasons, the controversy essentially concerned
comprehension of the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ‟s God-Manhood. It may seem more than
ever that this was a dispute over words and formulas, but again we must conclude that behind the
words was revealed a difference in realization or understanding of Christ. It seemed to many Or-
thodox that the divergence between them and the moderate Monophysites, followers of Severus
of Antioch, was in appearance only. The Monophysites rejected Chalcedon because they still
thought that in the Chalcedonian concept of “two natures” Christ was divided and the unity of
His Person, work, and sacrifice denied.
Monothelitism was an attempt to interpret Chalcedon in a way acceptable to the Mono-
physites. It was not a rejection of it but an explanation and adaptation. From the metaphysical
sphere the question was shifted to psychology; in Christ there were two natures but a single ac-
tion, one will. In other words, the two natures were not “expressed” in any way existentially, and
the unity for the sake of which the Monophysites had split off was saved. All previous attempts
to overcome Monophysitism had been excessively mechanical; they were directed toward entic-
ing the Monophysites back into orthodoxy by concealing the real difference of view on both
sides. This new attempt promised not to be mechanical. Its supporters did not cloak the meaning
of orthodox doctrine, but really intended to clarify it and demonstrate that there were not two na-
tures in the Chalcedonian doctrine, which would be equivalent to two hypostases or personali-
ties.
12

In all likelihood the initiator of this view was the patriarch of Constantinople, Sergius. He
had suggested it to Emperor Heraclius as a possible basis for religious unification with the Mo-
nophysites just at the moment when Heraclius was mobilizing all the forces of the empire to libe-

12
V. V. Bolotov, Lectures in the History of the Ancient Church (in Russian, St. Petersburg,
1907), Vol. 4.

89
rate the Eastern provinces from the Persians. In 622 the emperor met the head of the Severian
Monophysites, Paul the One-Eyed, in Karin (Erzerum), and in a theological discussion there used
for the first time the expression “one action”; hence the first stage of the dispute is usually called
Mono-energism.
The emperor again assumed the initiative in this theological solution; the unfortunate les-
sons of the past could not entirely cure this fundamental flaw of Roman theocracy. After a first
attempt to feel out the ground, events began to develop, and the result in 632 was a unia signed
in the form of nine anathemas and enforced by state edict.
Its success was only apparent; neither the Monophysites nor the Orthodox accepted it.
Although Cyrus of Alexandria, one of the chief participants in this attempt, wrote, “Alexandria
and all Egypt are delighted,” only the leaders recognized it. Most of the Copts did not follow the
conciliatory hierarchs, and the same was true in Armenia, Heraclius‟ main target in view of its
strategic position between Byzantium and Persia. But since it was outwardly successful, the doc-
ument remained the official doctrine of the empire, and Patriarch Sergius began to carry it out
within the Church.
At this point there was a reaction from the Orthodox side. The act of union had been
couched in extremely cautious terms, yet it was still obviously a compromise. Its defenders in-
sisted that they were not departing from the Tome of Leo the Great but were merely restating his
faith. Yet “single action” meant much more than only a “single person.” The difficulty was that
by “divine energy” or the total subordination of the human nature in Christ to the divine (since
God is the source of all Christ‟s human actions), the Monothelites, like the Severians, meant the
passivity of His human energy. They compared the operation of the divinity in Christ‟s humanity
with the operation of the soul in the human body. This customary analogy became dangerous in
the present instance, for it did not point out the most important point: the human freedom within
this divine energy, whereas the body is not free in its subordination to the soul.
The human element was presented too naturalistically and its unique feature was not
pointed out with sufficient force, precisely because it was not perceived. The Monothelites were
afraid to recognize the “natural” vital capacity of the human in Christ, “confusing it with inde-
pendence; therefore the human aspect seemed to them inevitably passive.”
13
In brief, Monothelit-
ism again cut away the completeness of Christ‟s humanity, although very subtly, and deprived
Him of that aspect without which man remains an empty form: human operation and human will.
The scholarly Palestinian monk Sophronius raised the alarm, urging Sergius and Cyrus to
repudiate the expression “one operation” as unorthodox. Sergius sensed the danger when Soph-
ronius became patriarch of Jerusalem in 634. Anticipating the latter‟s written confession of faith
by which each newly-elected patriarch informed his fellows of his election, Sergius wrote to
Pope Honorius in Rome endeavoring to bring him over to his side. Aware of Rome‟s sensitive-
ness to its position in the Church, he set out his nets very cleverly, and Pope Honorius imme-
diately fell into them by accepting Monothelitism as a genuine expression of the orthodox doc-
trine of Christ. But while Sophronius lived, Sergius had difficulty in implementing his agreement
with Rome. In 637 the patriarch of Jerusalem died, and the next year Emperor Heraclius issued
his own Exposition of Faith (Ecthesis), which was openly Monothelite, to be accepted by the
whole Church. Shortly afterward both Patriarch Sergius and Pope Honorius died.
In Constantinople Monothelitism was accepted for a long time, but in the West it imme-
diately provoked an uproar of protests. The real struggle against the heresy was begun during the

13
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 37.

90
reign of the grandson of Heraclius, Constantine — or Constas, the diminutive by which he has
been known in history. The chief defender of Orthodoxy during these years was the abbot of one
of the monasteries of Constantinople, St. Maximus the Confessor. In Africa in 645 he entered
into a public dispute against a former patriarch of Constantinople, the Monothelite Pyrrhus, and
the transcription of this dispute is a major source of information for us about the controversy.
Subsequently a number of synods in Africa condemned the heresy, and the Church‟s opposition
to the state‟s confession of faith became increasingly obvious.
In 648, a new theological edict, the Typos, in which the emperor attempted to impose the
status quo upon the Church, forbade any discussion of one or two wills. In response Pope Martin
convoked a great council of 105 bishops in the Lateran basilica, where Monothelitism was so-
lemnly condemned, and this condemnation was accepted by the whole Western Church. Now the
problem shifted once more from discussion to persecution; in July 653 Pope Martin was arrested,
and after lengthy torture brought to Constantinople where a prolonged martyrdom awaited him.
After a disgraceful trial in the Senate during which he was charged with absurd political crimes
— after beatings, mockery, and imprisonment — he was exiled to the Chersonesus (Crimea),
where he died in September 655.
Soon St. Maximus the Confessor followed him along the same glorious and painful road.
Again there were the same trial in the Senate and the same political accusations. Maximus ans-
wered in simple terms, but each of his answers hit the mark. According to tradition, in response
to the judges‟ assertion that even Roman clergy had taken communion with the patriarch, Max-
imus answered, “Even if the whole world takes communion, I shall not.” Maximus was sen-
tenced to exile in Thrace. His sufferings lasted another seven years. He was summoned back to
Constantinople, browbeaten, tortured, and mutilated. Maximus remained adamant to the end and
died during his last exile in the Caucasus in 662.

Sixth Ecumenical Council.
Every opposition seemed to have been broken, and the whole empire was silent. This
does not mean that the Church accepted Monothelitism, however. The West continued to reject
it; the power of Byzantium did not extend beyond the borders of Italy and often seemed only
nominal in Rome itself. The emperor supported the heresy, but when he died his successor Con-
stantine Pogonatus, wearied by this new division, gave the Church freedom to decide the ques-
tion in its essence and summoned an ecumenical council — the sixth — which met from No-
vember 680 to September 681 in Constantinople. Monothelitism was rejected and the Chalcedo-
nian definition supplemented by the doctrine of two wills in Christ.
We preach also, according to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, that in Him there are two
natural wills or willings and two natural modes of action, indivisible, unalterable, inseparable,
unmerged. And the two natural wills are not contrary (one to the other), as dishonorable heretics
have said — let it not be so! but His human will follows, not as resisting or reluctant but rather as
subject to His Divinity and omnipotent will.
The modern mind is again bewildered: what do “two wills” mean? And how can this be
disputed and anything decided about it? Yet by overcoming Monothelitism and affirming the
human will as well as the divine in Christ, the Church laid the foundation for a Christian anthro-
pology, for a concept of man that has given definition to the whole humanistic inspiration of our
world and our culture. Christian humanism, faith in the whole man and his absolute value, is the
final result of the Christological disputes and a genuine discovery of Orthodoxy.

91
The council anathematized the leaders of the heresy, the four patriarchs of Constantinople
— Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Timothy — as well as Cyrus of Alexandria and Pope Honorius,
whose condemnation by an ecumenical council has constantly been referred to by the Orthodox
as proof that the ancient Church ignored any doctrine of papal infallibility. On the other hand,
those mainly responsible, the emperors Heraclius and Constas, were passed over in silence. Nor
was mention made of the two martyrs for the truth, St. Martin the Pope and St. Maximus the
Confessor; formally they were political criminals. Both names were added to the list of confes-
sors and teachers of the Church only later, and this silence gives a rather unfortunate color to the
final victory of Orthodoxy in the Christological dispute. The truth continued to conquer, but men
were unfortunately becoming accustomed to the double bookkeeping of Byzantine theocracy.

Changing Church Structure.
While Monothelitism resulted in a fruitful reaction from Orthodox theology and in further
development of the Horos of Chalcedon, it justified none of the political hopes that had been
placed in it. The problem was finally settled at a time when both Monophysites and Nestorians,
whom it was designed to attract, were separated permanently from the empire by Islam and con-
sequently no longer represented a danger of internal separatism. Orthodoxy had become the state
and even the national, Greek faith of Byzantium; but this meant also that Orthodoxy itself had
merged completely with its Byzantine outer covering and had accepted it as its “historical” ca-
non.
This was expressed primarily in the final triumph of the seat of Constantinople as the
center of the whole Eastern Church. Justinian in his Code had called the Church of Constanti-
nople “the head of all other Churches” and was apparently the first to call its patriarch “ecumeni-
cal.” The title provoked sharp protests from Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth cen-
tury, but nevertheless became under Heraclius the usual title of the patriarchs of the imperial
city. The Greeks, it is true, have always made the reservation that it does not signify that the pa-
triarch of Constantinople is in any way superior to his brethren, and in the twelfth century one of
the most authoritative Byzantine canonists, Theodore Balsamon, did not regard the patriarch of
Constantinople as holding “any of the advantages which adorn the Pope of Rome.” Indeed, the
Greeks have never suffered from “papism” in the sense of claiming that the bishop of the capital
held any divinely established primacy over other bishops.
Yet the structure of the Church, of which the patriarch of Constantinople became the cen-
tral point, differed essentially from what we saw when the Church first united with the Roman
Empire. Canonically everything remained as it had been; the universal structure of the Church
remained as always a union of autocephalous (i.e., autonomous) patriarchs, the bishops of the
large cities retained their pompous titles, and dogmatically speaking, every bishop remained
what he had been in the doctrine of St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Hippolytus of Rome, or — even
earlier — St. Ignatius of Antioch: the image of God, the fully-empowered preserver of apostolic
tradition, and the bearer of the unity of his bishopric. In fact, however, such local churches,
which had previously felt themselves to be the people of God in all its fullness in a particular lo-
cality, were increasingly becoming eparchies or administrative subdivisions of a greater whole;
and the head of the eparchy, the bishop, was accordingly becoming a representative or agent of
the central, higher Church authority concentrated in the hands of the patriarch of Constantinople
and the patriarchal synod.
The change in the practice of episcopal consecration is extremely indicative of this. Ac-
cording to the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, a document of the first half of the

92
third century, a newly-elected bishop was always consecrated amid the congregation of the
Church to which he was elected — among the people whose spiritual father, first priest, and pas-
tor he was to be, and with their prayerful participation. It was the bishop‟s marriage to the
Church, according to St. Paul‟s teaching in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Immediately after his
consecration he celebrated the Eucharist, and the bishops who had laid hands upon him partici-
pated in this Eucharist as concelebrants. Also the bishop naturally remained in his Church to the
end of his days, so that a Church which had lost its bishop was called “widowed.”
In the course of time, however, the significance of the local Church was progressively
weakened, giving way to a centralized concept. By the fourth century we encounter bishops
shifting from one see to another. At first the practice was generally condemned, but the protests
dwindled, and the transfer of bishops from see to see became so usual that much later, in Petrine
Russia, it had become the norm of Church life. Bishops were increasingly accepted as assistants,
representatives, and executives of the orders of central power, and a new institution naturally de-
veloped which had been absolutely unknown in the early Church: the episcopal synod of the pa-
triarch.
The early Church had known episcopal councils, but their significance had been that local
churches were really represented; they participated in the person of their bishops. The bishop,
uniting his flock, was its voice and the witness to its faith, and for it he was the voice of the
Church Universal expressed at the council. The synod, on the other hand, was an administrative
organ, and for a bishop to participate in it meant, however paradoxical it may sound, that he was
in fact separated from his own flock and Church. The synod did not feel itself to be the “mouth
of the Church” as a council would be, but a sort of permanent authority which the bishops
represented in their local churches. We have seen that the synod of Constantinople was formed
almost haphazardly, being composed of bishops who happened to be passing through the capital
on various business. Once established, however, it soon became a permanent institution, and the
obvious reason for this was the increasing parallelism between the structures of Church and em-
pire. Later Byzantine documents, as we shall see, openly confirm the parallel between them: the
patriarch corresponded to the emperor and the synod to the Senate. This is far removed from the
sacramental root of the structure of the early Church.
When Egypt, Palestine, and Syria fell under the rule of Islam, Constantinople became the
only patriarchal see in the empire, and naturally the see became “ecumenical,” since the empire
was called oekumene, the universe. During the Christological dispute, Constantinople was ob-
liged to oppose the other Eastern centers: Alexandria, Antioch, and Ephesus. The capital was
frequently the source of heresies and of compromise with heresies; but it assumed the whole
weight of the struggle for Chalcedonian orthodoxy. From the time of Justinian and the separation
of the churches, the orthodox Chalcedonian bishops of Antioch and Alexandria, competing with
local Monophysite hierarchy, were not local men but appointed from Constantinople. This sort of
control from the capital increased in the seventh century; to replace the patriarch of Antioch,
Macarius (deposed for Monothelitism by the Sixth Ecumenical Council), the orthodox Theo-
phanes was simply appointed and consecrated right in Constantinople. This practice became
usual in the Orthodox Church for a very long time to come. The patriarchs of Antioch and Alex-
andria became leaders of small groups of Melkites, or Greek minorities in a Monophysite sea,
and naturally came to regard themselves as representatives of the center, the powerful ecumeni-
cal patriarch.
The importance of the patriarch of Constantinople increased so much by reason of these
various circumstances that he assumed the position of head of the whole Eastern Church, much

93
as the Roman pope stood at the head of the Western Church.
14
The analogy must not, of course,
be carried too far. The Roman pope in the West not only assumed the position of head, but the
fall of the empire made him the bearer of secular authority as well — the source of imperial and
state structure. The Byzantine patriarch, on the contrary, acquired his position because the theory
of “symphony” demanded a parallelism between the structure of state and Church. While the
empire was personified in the emperor, the priesthood must also have a single personification
which — became the ecumenical patriarch of the new Rome.

Byzantine Theology.
Following the development of ecclesiastical structure, a characteristically Byzantine evo-
lution took place in Orthodox theological tradition. Here Constantinople long lacked a personali-
ty of its own — its own school, like Alexandria or Antioch. It was either under the tradition of
one of the competing tendencies or obliged to occupy a position of compromise because of its
imperial interests. Chalcedon was the first step in a theology specifically Byzantine, in that it
overcame the extremes of the two main traditions and combined them in a creative synthesis.
Byzantine theology developed further along this same road. The main stages were marked by the
Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, the theme of which was the deepening, the more precise
definition, and the assimilation of the Chalcedonian dogma.
Yet while Chalcedonian orthodoxy was at first a sort of synthesis between Alexandria
and Antioch, the conclusions resulting from this synthesis were a specific feature of Byzantine
Orthodoxy. A reference to the past and to tradition has always had fundamental importance in
the Church. Thus the early Christian writers made much use of the adjective “apostolic”: for ex-
ample, the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, and the later Apostolic Constitutions
and Apostolic Canons. This did not mean to convey the idea of original apostolic authorship, but
only that the writer regarded the proposed doctrine as stemming from the apostles, as part of the
same unchanging and eternal tradition of the Church. After the fourth century a similar meaning
attended reference to the Fathers, those theologians and teachers whose teaching was finally ac-
cepted by the Church as an expression of its experience and tradition, and hence became norma-
tive.
After the Council of 381, Emperor Theodosius in a special law pointed out to his subjects
certain bishops, communion with whom should be de facto an outward sign of orthodoxy. He did
this to bring order out of the chaos that reigned as a result of the Arian dispute. In the fifth cen-
tury St. Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian,
and Gregory of Nyssa, were recognized unconditionally by everyone, and the argument that
something “came from the Fathers” acquired increasing importance. The Christological disputes
again raised questions as to the orthodoxy of whole theological traditions; we have seen that the
Fifth Ecumenical Council was forced to condemn theologians who had already died and had
been revered in their regions as Fathers. The Fifth Council furnished a sort of review and re-
evaluation of local traditions, and it was natural that a list of “Selected Fathers,” undisputed
bearers of orthodox tradition, should be composed there for the first time. It included St. Athana-
sius the Great, Hilary of Poitiers (a Western opponent of Arianism), Basil the Great, Gregory the
Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theophilus and Cyril
of Alexandria, Leo the Great, and Proclus. Not one “Father” was from Constantinople. Proclus

14
T. Barsov, The Patriarch of Constantinople and His Power in the Russian Church (in Russian,
St. Petersburg, 1878), p. 104.

94
had been patriarch in the capital but expressed the Alexandrian tendency in his theology. Byzan-
tine theology began by summing up, overcoming contradictions, co-ordinating words and con-
cepts. Therefore it was in Byzantium that the cycle of tradition was first outlined and the “patris-
tic testaments” defined which would forever remain the foundation of Orthodox theology. The
pre-Nicene Fathers and almost all the “Eastern” teachers remained outside this cycle. In content
Byzantine theology was limited to two themes: the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the
God-Man. These were the themes of the great dogmatic disputes of the fourth and fifth centuries,
and all the resources of the Byzantine ecclesiastical mind went into developing and assimilating
them.

Quality of Life in the New Age.
In the seventh century there was a perceptible coarsening of morals, a certain “barbariza-
tion” of the whole pattern of life. The centuries of invasion, impoverishment, and constant mili-
tary tension had left their mark. One could already sense the approach of the Middle Ages, in the
negative sense (which in no way excludes their positive aspects), and much even in the life of the
Christian community reflected this coarsening. Christians had become used to Christianity and it
had become an ordinary, everyday matter.
This is the main impression we receive from the decrees of the so-called Consilium Quin-
tisextum, or Trullan Council, of 691, summoned by Emperor Justinian II to supplement by dis-
ciplinary decrees the work of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, which had been limited
to purely doctrinal action. The life of the Church required clear regulatory principles, and the
Trullan Council (so called from the pillared hall of the palace in which the sessions were held)
provided them in the form of 102 canons. They give us a picture of the daily life of the Church in
that period. The purpose of the Council was to heal infirmities, and its decrees, of course, reflect
only the negative aspects and defects of the Church community, but these are interesting just be-
cause they indicate the extent to which the empire was Christianized after four centuries of the
“age of Constantine.”
So far as the social and political scene was concerned, Christianity had conquered beyond
question. The defects in the Church community themselves resulted from this victory and its de-
cisiveness. Christianity had entered into the flesh and blood of mankind, a large fraction of
which had been unified by the empire, and in the depths it of course defined, evaluated, and
judged life. This will be discussed presently.
Yet no victory maintains itself; it requires constant effort and tension, but inevitably the
tension begins to slacken. For example, in the struggle against the pagans and its heroic conquest
of the world, the Church had never hesitated in adapting many “natural” forms of religion, usual
for paganism, to the service of Christianity. The pagans had celebrated the birth of the Invincible
Sun on December 25; Christians allotted to this date the celebration of the birth of Christ, which
taught men “to honor the Sun of Righteousness and to come to know it from the height of the
East.”
15
The pagans had celebrated an “epiphany” on January 6, which became the date of the
Christian Epiphany as well. The ecclesiastical cult of “Unmercenary Saints” had much in com-
mon with the pagan cult of the Dioscuri; the forms of the Christian saint‟s life with the models of
pagan eulogies of heroes; and finally, the explanation of the Christian sacraments to the cate-
chumens with the mysterial terminology of pagan initiations.

15
Hymn for Christmas Day.

95
However, all these borrowings were in fact only formal; the Church filled the mold that
was customary for the time with all the novelty of its Gospel, the image of Christ and His fol-
lowers, so that the mold itself was entirely converted to the Church and became a vehicle for the
light, wisdom, and vital force of the Gospel. The central point, however, is that no conversion is
in itself a guarantee of the purity of Christianity, and no form — even the most Christian in es-
sence and origin — can magically save, if it is not filled with the Spirit and the truth by which it
is justified and which it serves. One must keep in mind that paganism comprises not only the re-
ligions which preceded Christianity chronologically and were eliminated when it appeared; it is
also a sort of permanent and natural magnetic pole of religion, and in this sense a constant threat
for every religion. Christianity demands unceasing effort, continual filling of its forms with con-
tent, self-testing, and “trial of the spirit.” Any divergence between form and content, or the
emergence of form as a value and goal in itself, is paganism. It is a return to natural religion, to
belief in form, ceremony, and sacred objects without regard to their content and spiritual mean-
ing. In this sense even Christian rites and sacred objects may themselves become centers of pa-
gan veneration and may overshadow what they solely exist for: the liberating force of truth.
This tendency becomes perceptible in the seventh century, appearing as a kind of price
for the complete political victory of Christianity. In 530 a Byzantine monk, Barsanuphius, at-
tacked “mechanical” religiosity which reduces the whole significance of Christianity to external
forms. “If you pass by relics, bow down once, twice, thrice . . . but that is enough. Cross your-
selves three times if you wish, but no more.”
16
Other teachers attacked those who express their
faith only “by covering crosses and icons with kisses.” What are the Gospels and communion to
them? If the Gospel is too long and the prayers dragged out longer than usual, they display signs
of impatience and displeasure. Even during short services, Christians fill the time talking about
business or condemning their neighbors. Others simply stand on the street so as to run into
church at the last moment and “take communion on the run,”“ as St. Anastasius of Sinai ex-
pressed it. But they are perfect Christians, for have they not kissed the icons of Our Redeemer
and the saints? In Byzantine society were many examples of the sins of superstition and a super-
ficial attitude toward the faith. Behind them loomed something still more terrifying: under the
Christian outer covering a most obvious dual faith continued to exist. Many of the canons of the
Trullan Council are devoted to the struggle against open distortions of Christianity and its trans-
formation into pagan magic.
Unfortunately the clergy themselves, supposed to be a model for the faithful “in word,
life, love, spirit, faith and purity,” were not beyond reproach. In many places the level of clerical
education fell: the council assigned the bishops to preach every Sunday, and not to give way to
their own ideas but to be guided by the Fathers. Many canons forbid presbyters to maintain ho-
tels, lend money on interest, accept payment for ordination, or play games of chance. They por-
tray a perceptible decay in the monastic life as well; the council especially insisted that monastic-
ism is a way to salvation, not a means of avoiding military service or achieving a secure old age.
Monks should not leave the monasteries, spend the night under the same roof with a woman, or
arrange a celebration for their own tonsure.
All this does not mean that religious life in Byzantium consisted only of defects. The
council mentions them because its purpose is to combat them. If only by their resemblance to the
defects of almost all subsequent periods of Church history, they demonstrate that Christianity
had ceased to be selective, had become the religion of the masses, and for too many was only a

96
self-evident form the inner meaning of which was not even considered. For these it had truly be-
come a natural religion, and they no longer heard its call for a “renewal of nature.”
Church life at this period cannot of course be judged only by the canons of the Trullan
Council. The effort to remedy defects and expose sins is evidence that spiritual leaders had pre-
served unsullied the genuine ideal of Christianity. Moreover, this ideal had truly grown into the
human mind, fundamentally transforming not only individual lives but the whole spirit of the
culture, all that composed its main value for each era. For the past must be studied and judged
from its concepts and from the treasures toward which its heart strives — not only by its failures.
In other words, we must discover not only how far this society realized its ideal, but just what the
ideal was.

Development of the Liturgy.
From this point of view, nothing expresses the spirit of the age better than the Byzantine
Church services, which began to be arranged just at this time into a sort of system, a structured
world of forms and modes, which has remained the permanent and unsurpassed pinnacle of East-
ern Orthodoxy. Many varied factors affected its development and establishment in the services of
the Orthodox Church, and even today we may distinguish the strata of various periods, each of
which had its own liturgical key. The first was the synagogue and the Old Testament foundation
of the early Christian cult, which the Sacrament crowned and filled with new meaning. Second,
there was the development of a daily cycle in which the features of monastic psalmody were re-
flected. Later came the swift growth of the cult of saints and the influence of dogmatic disputes,
expressed mainly in the increased number of Church feasts. Finally, the characteristic features of
the Church‟s new position in the state and in society caused various aspects of human life to be
sanctified by the Church. We shall see some of these details in the next chapter.
After the evolution of ecclesiastical structure noted earlier came that of other forms of
Church life, primarily the liturgy. Here also the triumph of a specifically Byzantine tradition, that
of Constantinople, is visible and gradually grew in strength. The early Church had a number of
local liturgical traditions. In the Acts of the Apostles the Eucharist was defined as an assembly
“of all together for one and the same purpose” — for the eternal realization of the sole and
unique Supper — but each Church expressed this fundamental uniform content in its own form,
which was the fruit of genuine liturgical creativity.
Almost a hundred anaphoras, or eucharistic prayers, have come down to us from ancient
times, ascribed to different names, but each essentially expressing long liturgical experience and
revealing the basic and unalterable meaning of the Eucharist in human words. Thus modern li-
turgical scholarship distinguishes types of eucharistic prayers — the Jerusalem, the Alexandrian,
the Roman, the Syrian, the Persian, and so on — each of which combines in turn a whole group
of liturgies having their own characteristics. Even more forcefully than purely theological litera-
ture, here each Christian tradition expresses its spirit, its ethos, its interpretation of the universal
truth of the Church.
The Church of Constantinople, however, not being an ancient one, had no such clearly
expressed tradition as Egypt or Syria. For a long period there was a struggle between various in-
fluences — that of Antioch, expressed by St. John Chrysostom and Nestorius, and that of Alex-
andria, expressed by Anatolius, who was elected patriarch at the Synod of Robbers — and each
was naturally reflected in the development of the liturgy. We know, for example, that Chrysos-
tom brought into Constantinople much of Antiochene liturgical practice, and Nestorius protested
against the use of the term “Mother of God” in the liturgy.

97
On the other hand, the permanent link with the court, the constant presence of the empe-
ror at the liturgy, and the imperial concept of the Church of St. Sophia inevitably carried weight.
The tradition of Constantinople came to include elements of court ritual which expressed the
theocratic concept of imperial authority and made everything surrounding the emperor “divine.”
Finally, through Constantine, the influence of liturgical customs in Jerusalem was very
perceptible. In the fourth century Jerusalem was a center of general interest; majestic churches
were built there, pilgrims came from all over the world, and there, in the Holy Land, steeped in
memories of the earthly life of the Savior, the services became increasingly dramatic. This is
well demonstrated in the diary of Etheria, a pilgrim from Gaul who visited the Holy Land at the
end of the fourth century and left a detailed description of its Church customs.
Thus the liturgical pattern that gradually formed in the capital was naturally a synthesis of
various traditions and influences. Its basic features were formed in the seventh century, when the
see of Constantinople was elevated permanently to the central position in the whole Orthodox
Church of the East. Once formed, it not only influenced the other “local” traditions but soon be-
came the only form of divine service for the whole Eastern Orthodox Church. Thus the Byzan-
tine liturgy in its dual form, that of Chrysostom and of Basil the Great, gradually squeezed out
the ancient Alexandrian liturgy known by the name of St. Mark, as well as the Antiochene litur-
gy of St. James, brother of the Lord. This triumph of the Byzantine rite applied not only to the
Eucharist but to the whole cycle of divine services. The “Byzantine rite” in the end became the
only rite of the Orthodox Church.
Late Byzantium furnishes the definitive system of services. In the seventh century, the
basic tone of liturgical creativeness may already be sensed. It was founded, of course, upon Holy
Scripture. The language of the Bible became and remained the language of the Church, and this
not only because it was permeated with religion and full of rich images, or corresponded stri-
kingly to religious feelings in all their variety. The faith and experience of the Church are inse-
parable from the Scriptures, which are its source. Everything the Church believes and by which it
lives took place “according to the Scriptures” (“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also
received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that he was buried,
and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures: . . .” (I Cor. 15:3-4). But this
“according to the Scriptures” means much more than fulfillment of prophecies and predictions; it
means first of all the inner link between what Christ did and what the Scripture relates — aside
from this link neither Scripture nor the meaning of Christ‟s acts can be understood. The unfold-
ing and deepening reflection of this link is precisely the content of the Christian service, of
Church poetry, and even of the rite itself.

Veneration of the Virgin Mary.
Since it is impossible to illustrate this development in all its complexity, let us take one
example with very particular meaning for the Church: the gradual growth in the services of the
veneration of the Mother of God, which plays such an important part in the liturgical life of the
Church. This example is significant also because most historians of religion regard the cult of the
Virgin Mary as indubitable proof of a metamorphosis within Christianity, the penetration of an
ancient, almost primeval cult of the fertility forces in nature. Their main argument is that in the
first centuries we see no special singling out of Mary, let alone a cult, which did not arise until
the fifth century — just the period when Christianity became reconciled with the world.
Other historians, while they establish historical reasons for each of the Mariological
feasts, the time it appeared, and the authors of the texts, still miss the main point: that what gives

98
significance to the flourishing of these feasts of the Virgin is the growing strength of the Mario-
logical theme in the content of the Church services. Finally, the Protestants, as is well known,
simply reject veneration of the Mother of God because it lacks “biblical basis.”
Yet it was precisely because of the biblical basis that this veneration arose; it is linked
first of all with the Bible. This biblical basis is the reflection of the Old Testament in the New, as
I have just shown, and on the other hand, the discovery of even more profound meaning in the
Old Testament in the light of the New. For example, the Feast of the Entrance of the Virgin into
the Temple, which probably arose at the end of the seventh century and for which hymns written
by St. Andrew of Crete have been preserved, has no formal biblical basis; the Gospel tells us
nothing of any such event. Yet we need only read the liturgical texts of this feast in their original
form (they have been significantly altered since then) to see the genuinely mystical insight or
reflection that lay behind the feast.
If we constantly and prayerfully read Scripture, our attention is drawn continuously to
new depths of meaning in it. Thus, the Temple at Jerusalem occupies an important position in
both the Old Testament and the Gospel, and Christ compares Himself to this unique and sacred
center of Judaism, the meeting point of all its religious life: “Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up . . .” He is speaking of the temple of His Body. But even from this it is
clear that Christians could not help but regard the Old Testament Temple as a prefiguration of
another religious meeting point, another unique and all-embracing center. The whole positive
significance of the Temple was fulfilled in Christ — He was the new Temple, and this Temple is
Man, his body and his soul.
We have already noted the significance of this contrast between the two temples — the
Temple at Jerusalem and that of the Church “not made by hands”: the Body of Christ — for
Christian Church buildings. The Christian reflection did not stop with this, however. In a time
when the Church was growing in its understanding of Christ‟s humanity, amid the tension of all
its spiritual forces, it inevitably included in its reflection the Person from whom Christ had re-
ceived His humanity, His Body. If God had chosen a Man to be His Temple in the future, then
the Virgin Mary was such a temple of God in a most particular and literal sense, “for what was
born from Her is holy.” Her body was a temple erected by the Old Testament itself, by all its sa-
credness, its expectation of salvation, its faithfulness to God, which made possible the union of
God with Man, and in this sense She is the fruit of the Old Testament Temple, of that link with
God, which the Temple expressed. If this is so, then reflection reaches out to the relationship be-
tween this living temple and that other one whose significance, as the only center and source of
salvation and union with God, Christ came to “fulfill” by His Incarnation: “The all-pure Temple
of the Savior . . . today is led into the Temple of the Lord,”
17
and in this entry the final meaning
of the Temple is revealed and it in turn is transcended.
One may object that this would be a feast for an “idea” which had become encrusted with
“myth.” This is both true and false. The concept is based on an undoubted historical fact, the en-
try of the Virgin Mary, like every Jewish girl, into the Temple at Jerusalem. True, the fact has
not been documented, but it is beyond doubt, since it is self-evident: clearly in any case Mary
entered the Temple and was in the Temple. While the liturgical formulation of events narrated in
the Gospels is guided of course by the narrative itself, here in the divine service the historical
fact is gradually surrounded with poetic or symbolic details that emphasize the significance the

17
Kontakion of the Feast, cf. I.F. Hapgood, A Service Book of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apos-
tolic Church (3d ed.; Brooklyn, N.Y., 1956), page 172.

99
Church has found in it. Fundamentally this is just a theological unfolding of the Scriptures and of
all the meanings inherent in them — a reflection of the realities of Christianity.
The same may be said of the other feasts of the Mother of God, which gradually devel-
oped into a whole Theotokos cycle, paralleling the liturgical cycle of John the Baptist. There was
no “metamorphosis” only the development of the original experience of the Church. It is enough
to read the very earliest texts of the services for the Mother of God to be convinced that venera-
tion of her not only did not eclipse the Christocentrism of the early Church, or introduce any
neopagan elements into Christianity, as certain scholars — even Christian ones — assert; but is
on the contrary wholly rooted in the Church‟s reflection of the image of the Savior as God and
Man.
Veneration of the Mother of God quickly colored the whole Church service, and this per-
haps reveals one of the most profound aspects of the Christianization of the world at that time.
From those centuries when the Christian seed was only beginning to grow, and few changes for
the better were outwardly apparent in morals, in society, in social and governmental ideals —
when, on the contrary, a pronounced barbarization of the world might even be observed — the
image of the Mother, from whom all humanity gained sonship on the Cross, an image of com-
plete purity, meekness, love, and self-abnegation, reigns forever over this world. The Church‟s
experience of the Mother of God is profoundly Christian, or more accurately, it is human in a
Christian way. In this experience dogmatic understanding is permeated with a sympathy utterly
delicate and personal — in it attention is focused for the first time on the meaning of one‟s per-
sonal life, and it penetrates into the depths of the human image and elevates it to divine radiance.
The veneration of the Mother of God, the first fruit of the Church‟s exploration of the dogma of
Christ‟s God-Manhood, is the source of the tenderness and sensitivity that Christianity intro-
duced into human consciousness. And the world which sensed so palpably the protection of this
maternal love, which could sing of it and deck it in such beauty, was a world already profoundly
Christian regardless of all its sins and imperfections.

Reflection of Theology and Asceticism in the Services.
A characteristic feature of the period must be recognized in the gradual permeation of
theological experience into liturgical poetry and the Church services. While the Bible remained
the basic content and framework of the services, as it had always been — the Psalms, the Old
Testament hymns, the reading — this framework increasingly included the creations of Church
hymn-writers: kontakia, stichera, and canons. First comes St. Romanos Melodus, who died
probably in the middle of the sixth century. The rise of the so-called kontakion form of liturgical
poetry, later pushed aside by the canon, is linked with his name. What has reached us from him
(the kontakion of Christmas, “Today a virgin bringeth forth the Super-substantial”; for Easter,
“Though Thou hast descended into the grave, O Deathless One”; and so on)
18
indicates his im-
mense poetic talent, and in his works we fully sense what one may call the miracle of Byzantine
liturgical writing: the striking combination of plastic literary form and genuine poetry with a pro-
foundly theological, penetrating content. In comparison with later Byzantine works, which con-
tain so much watery rhetoric, the early strata of our service books reveal real treasures. This is
already great Christian poetry, which of course bears witness to the maturity of Christian culture.
Another amazing monument from this same period is the Akathistus or “not-sitting hymn” (it

18
Cf. Hapgood, op. cit., pp. 178, 230.

100
was always sung standing), long ascribed to Patriarch Sergius the Monothelite, and composed,
according to tradition, after the miraculous escape of Byzantium from the siege of 626.
A somewhat different note is introduced by the works connected with ascetic experience:
the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, who died in the first half of the eighth century, is the
finest of these and is still read on the first days of Lent. While the heritage of Melodus contained
in poetic form the revelation of the Church‟s dogma and doctrine, particularly the Trinity and the
doctrine of the two natures, the Great Canon is dedicated wholly to repentance. Monasticism had
from the first been a road of repentance, but it is characteristic that in the liturgical handling of
this theme there is an almost exaggerated self-incrimination and self-blame. Again one must be
aware of the whole significance of this element; it emphasizes the defects in the Church pre-
viously discussed. The monastic community is not reconciled with evil and does not minimize
Christianity. Most important of all, the deep sigh of repentance we now hear in Orthodox Church
services as a constant theme expresses again how deeply the image of the Man revealed in the
Gospel, and assimilated in the experience of holy men by fasting, prayer, and vigil, had entered
into the mind of the Church. Behind the customary images of the Psalter and the all-embracing
sense of God‟s majesty, before which everything seemed trivial, there now sounded forcefully a
longing for man‟s “primeval beauty.” It is repentance coming not only from a recognition of
broken commandments or from fear or worship of God, but from a human being who recognizes
an “image of inexpressible glory” within himself and is therefore able to measure the full depth
of his downfall. This was a real longing for divinity, a constant view of oneself in the light of the
God-Man.
There were many sins and much evil in the Byzantine ecclesiastical community, but self-
satisfaction was not one of them. Toward the end of the early Byzantine period it was as if the
whole Church were decked in black monastic garb and had taken the road of repentance and self-
condemnation. The stronger the outward victory of the Church and the more solemn, rich, and
magnificent the outward forms of Christian Byzantinism became, the more strongly sounded this
outcry of repentance, the entreaty for forgiveness: “I have sinned, I have transgressed, I have
been unrighteous in Thy sight, nor have I done nor have I observed what Thou hast commanded
us.”
The surpassing beauty and splendor of St. Sophia; the holy rhythm, seeming to measure
eternity, of the liturgical mystery that revealed a heaven upon earth and transformed the world
again and again into its pristine cosmic beauty; the bitter sadness and reality of sin, the aware-
ness of constant downfall — all this was the ultimate profundity of this world and the fruit of the
Church within it.

Thus outwardly the Byzantine cycle describes Orthodoxy at the end of the first four cen-
turies of the “period of Constantine.” In the seventh century this cycle was only perceptible as
yet. The real climax of Orthodox Byzantium would come in the next era, and it is there that we
must consider the Seventh Ecumenical Council, since that period overlaps the title of this chap-
ter.
Like every historical form, Byzantinism was of course limited and imperfect and had a
number of defects. In the final account, however, unlike other forms, it alone would express the
unshakable historicism of Christianity, its link with the fate of the world and of man. Though this
marriage between Church and empire was the source of so many weaknesses and sins, all that
rejected it in the East at the time became a blind alley, an exit from history, doomed to gradual

101
decay in sterile sands. In the story of Orthodoxy, however, a new time was beginning which
would bring new pain but new victories as well.

4. Byzantium.

Significance of the Byzantine Period.
It is strange that the Orthodox mind has had so little interest in Byzantium. As a field of
study, Byzantium has been the domain either of secular historians — among whom, of course,
Russian scholars have held and rightly still hold a leading position — or of specialists on specific
problems. Despite the abundance of monographs in which Orthodox historical scholarship may
take a confident pride, there exists no history of the Byzantine Church in the full sense of the
word, which would both describe and try to comprehend this phenomenon in its totality. Some-
how entire centuries have slipped from the Church‟s memory, and this makes every attempt at a
rapid survey of Byzantium extremely difficult. The only thing that can be done is to try to give
some sense of the meaning of the Byzantine problem.
Byzantium can in no way be considered merely a completed and outlived chapter of
Church history. Not only does it continue to live in the Orthodox Church, but in a sense still de-
fines Orthodoxy itself, constituting its historical form. Just as modern Catholicism crystallized in
the Middle Ages and in the era of the Counter-Reformation, so — perhaps to an even greater ex-
tent — did Orthodoxy acquire its present form, its historic canon, in Byzantium. Simple inquiry
will soon show that any aspect of modern Orthodox Church life to which one might refer found
its present-day form in the Byzantine period in particular. The development of the Rule of wor-
ship was completed in Byzantium, a Rule, which makes of it a system permitting almost no
progress or change. The Byzantine typicons and euchologia of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies differ hardly at all from our own missals and rule-books. The Orthodox icon is painted in
accordance with the Byzantine tradition; our canonical tradition was fixed in both volume and
interpretation by Byzantine canonists. The patristic heritage, which has until now been the basis
of Orthodox theology, was given final shape in Byzantium, and there first flowered the manner
and spirit of Orthodox piety which is best expressed in Russian by the word tserkovnost. In a
sense the Byzantine period must be acknowledged as decisive in the history of Orthodoxy, as the
age of the crystallization of Church life. The modern Orthodox Church is — from the viewpoint
of history — the Church of Byzantium, which has survived the Byzantine Empire by five hun-
dred years.
All historians of Byzantium declare in unison that a new period in her history opened
with the beginning of the eighth century. The seventh century had ended in anarchy and the al-
most complete ruin of the empire. In the year 717 the Arabs besieged Constantinople, and inter-
nal disorder made her an easy prey for any conqueror. Leo the Isaurian — one of those soldiers
from the eastern border country, numerous in the Byzantine army, who often rose to the highest
ranks and by whom the empire was actually held together — saved her. Leo was proclaimed em-
peror and thus began the new Isaurian dynasty. In a series of victorious wars, he and his son
Constantine Copronymus (717-45, 745-75) retrieved the situation and added internal strength by
a profound military, economic, and administrative reform of the state. This reform, completing
the evolution already begun under Heraclius, concluded the metamorphosis of Byzantium from a
world empire into a comparatively small state in which all was subordinated to the need of with-

102
standing pressure: that of Islam from the east, the Slavs from the north, and — soon to come —
the Normans from the west. The Roman oekumene had finally been transformed into Byzantium.

Background of Iconoclasm.
For the Church this period opens with a new disturbance, one that has branded the names
of the Isaurian emperors in its memory forever. This was iconoclasm, cause of a prolonged
struggle lasting almost half a century. There has been much scholarly dispute as to its origins.
Some have seen in it the influence of the Mohammedan East, with its ban on human images, and
an attempt at a certain psychological compromise with Islam; others, the first revolt against the
Church of a secular culture inspired by the emperors, and a struggle for the liberation of art from
the Church; while a third group has detected a new outburst of the perennial Hellenic “spiritual-
ism,” for which the veneration of icons was a manifestation in religion of the artificial and ma-
terial.
At any rate, it has been customary since the tenth century to lay all responsibility for the
rise and spread of heresy at the feet of the emperors. But new research shows that the dispute
over icons first arose in the Church itself, and that state authority interfered in a peremptory way
only later. It has also been shown that there were sufficient grounds for the dispute.
The veneration of icons has had a long and complicated history. It, too, is the fruit of
men‟s gradual assimilation of the Church‟s faith. The early Church did not know the icon in its
modern, dogmatic significance. The beginning of Christian art — the paintings of the catacombs
— is of a symbolic nature. It is not the portrayal of Christ, of the saints, or of the various events
of sacred history as on an icon, but the expression of certain ideas about Christ and the Church:
first and foremost, the sacramental experience of baptism and the Eucharist — that is to say, the
twofold Mystery through which salvation is granted to him who believes.
In art of a signitive kind it is not the interpretation of its subjects — for how they are in-
terpreted makes no difference to its aims — but their selection and combination that are impor-
tant. It is not so much inclined to depict divinity as it is to portray the function of divinity. The
Good Shepherd of the sarcophagi and the catacombs is not only not an image, he is not even a
symbol of Christ; he is the visual signification of the idea that the Saviour saves, that He has
come to save us, that we are saved by Him. Daniel in the lion‟s den is likewise not a portrait of
even the most conventional sort, but a symbol of the fact that Daniel was saved and that we have
been saved like Daniel. This art cannot be called art in the real sense of the word. It neither
represents nor expresses; it signifies, and it signifies that fiery core, that living sun of faith in the
“mysteries” to which the martyrs and pastors of those centuries, the newly-baptized pagans, the
rite of their baptism, and the enemies of the Christian Church themselves all bear witness.
19

But, although it renounced art for the sake of something else, this painting of the cata-
combs actually proved to be a cause of the rise of
that new, medieval art, religious and Christian throughout, which gradually consolidated
itself both in the east and in the west of the Empire. In order that it might arise, corporeal and
mental forms and images had to become spiritual, a naturalistic art had to become transcendental.
So as to come to life and be reborn, art was obliged to renounce itself and plunge, as though into

19
V.V. Weidle, The Baptism of Art (Westminster, England, 1950).

103
a baptismal font, into the pure element of faith. It accepted “penitence for its life” and was
washed “in the waters of everlasting life” that it might become “a new creature.”
20

The icon is also a fruit of this renewal of art and its appearance is inextricably connected
with the unveiling in the Church‟s consciousness of the meaning of the Incarnation: the fullness
of the Godhead that dwells corporeally in Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the Man Christ
reveals Him in full. An image of the Man Jesus is therefore an image of God, for Christ is the
God-Man. If the material universe and its matter can be sanctified by grace of the Holy Spirit,
and in feeding our bodies also feed the “whole man” in God‟s conception of him as an incarnate
spirit; if the water of baptism grants us forgiveness of sins; if the bread and wine of the Eucharist
make present to us the Body and Blood of Christ, then a portrayal of Christ, the product of hu-
man art, may also be filled with the grace of His presence and power — may become not only an
image but also a spiritual reality. In the icon there is at once a further revelation of the profundity
of the dogma of Chalcedon and the gift of a new dimension in human art, because Christ has
given a new dimension to man himself.

Icons in the Seventh Century.
By the seventh century many literary remains give evidence of the veneration of icons; it
is a well-established fact of Church life. Writes Leontius of Neapolis:

I sketch and paint Christ and the sufferings of Christ in churches, in homes, in public
squares, and on icons, on linen cloth, in closets, on clothes, and in every place I paint so
that men may see them plainly, may remember them and not forget them . . . And as thou,
when thou makest thy reverence to the Book of the Law, bowest down not to the sub-
stance of skins and ink, but to the sayings of God that are found therein, so I do reverence
to the image of Christ. Not to the substance of wood and paint — that shall never happen!
. . . But, by doing reverence to an inanimate image of Christ . . . I think to embrace Christ
Himself and to do Him reverence. . . . We Christians, by bodily kissing an icon of Christ,
or of an apostle or martyr, are in spirit kissing Christ Himself or His martyr.

In this perspective, every saint is a witness for Christ, showing forth all the power of union with
Him, being His living icon. And from this Chalcedonian interpretation of the icon came the me-
thod of painting them prescribed by the eighty-second decree of the Trullan Synod (692):

In venerating the ancient icons and the saints who were devoted to the Church, as sym-
bols and prototypes of the Truth, we especially venerate grace and truth as the fulfillment
of the Law. Therefore, that what has been accomplished may be represented to all men‟s
eyes through the art of painting, We decree that henceforth there are to be imprinted upon
the icons of Christ our God — Who took on the guise of humanity that in this semblance
men might discover the depth of God‟s humility — His Words, to bring to mind His life
in the fresh, His Passion, His saving Death, and the redemption of the whole world which
has proceeded therefrom.

In this text the fundamental meaning of icons is given: they are testimonials to the Incarnation,
reminders of it, images whose subject has been filled with power.

20
Ibid.

104
As is almost always the case in the Church, acceptance and definition preceded the path
of understanding; experience came before revelation in thought. Moreover, because the line di-
viding the Chalcedonian essence of icons from real idol-worship is exceedingly fine, the venera-
tion of icons very soon became perverted in many places and took on improper forms. The se-
venth century, as already indicated, was simultaneously the time of astonishing fruits of Ortho-
dox spirituality and of an indisputable coarsening of the mass of Christians. Among the latter the
veneration of icons was sometimes marked by crude and sensual superstition. “Many think,”
wrote St. Anastasius of Sinai, “that he sufficiently reveres his baptism who, entering the church,
kisses all the icons without paying any attention to the Liturgy and the divine service.”
21

We hear of the custom of taking icons as godparents for one‟s children, of adding paint
scraped from icons to the Eucharistic wine, of laying the Sacrament upon an icon so as to receive
it from a saint‟s hand, and so on. Obviously, many practices involved a fundamental distortion;
the honor paid to icons was often close to idol- worship, and the honoring of their material sub-
stance was permitted. In other words, the same thing occurred with the veneration of icons that
had often happened earlier with the cult of the saints and the veneration of relics. Arising from
sound Christological foundations as a product and revelation of the Church‟s faith in Christ, too
often they lost touch with this foundation and, changing into something self-contained, lapsed
back into paganism.
But these distortions alone were not sufficient to create the profound and long- lasting
iconoclastic movement. A subtle and theologically considered rejection of the whole concept of
the icon developed, which forced the Church to further creative effort and theological contempla-
tion.

Iconoclastic Movement.
Iconoclastic sentiments appeared at the very beginning of the eighth century among the
bishops of the eastern borderlands of the empire. They at once proved so strong that Germanos,
patriarch of Constantinople, was obliged to defend the ancient practice of venerating of icons in a
special epistle. The ferment soon reached the Emperor Leo and immediately took on an imperial
dimension; Leo openly sided with the iconoclasts, and in the year 730 published a decree against
icons. The patriarch, who had not submitted to him, was removed and replaced by Anastasius,
who was sympathetic to iconoclasm. Shortly thereafter the first blood was shed. In a skirmish
between the mob and soldiers who, at the emperor‟s command, had taken down from the Chal-
copratian Gate a revered icon of Christ, several persons were killed. In Greece opposition to the
new movement took the form of a political uprising; the entire West condemned iconoclasm,
again unanimously; all this poured oil upon a blazing fire. But it was Leo‟s son, Constantine Co-
pronymus who set in motion real persecution of the icon- worshipers. A brilliant general and sta-
tesman, he also showed himself a remarkable theologian; fragments of his works against icons
that have been preserved display deep, well-reasoned conviction.
Constantine pursued his iconoclastic policy systematically. Carrying out in the space of a
few years a purge of the episcopate, in 753 he summoned a council in Constantinople at which
icons and the veneration of icons were condemned. The active minority, the convinced oppo-
nents of icons, had triumphed. The majority were unprepared, for they had never thought through
the theological question of the veneration of icons.

21
Migne, Patrologia Graeca, LXXXIX, 829.

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Having secured the council‟s approval, Constantine put its decision into practice with fire
and sword. Many names of “new martyrs,” as the Church entitled them, have remained in our
calendar from that decade of blood (762-75). It must be admitted that the Church‟s first reaction
was rather feeble. Among the martyrs of this period we find almost no bishops, secular clergy, or
laymen. Many continued to revere icons secretly, but did not state publicly their convictions.
Even St. Tarasius of Constantinople, who was to be a future hero of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, at which the dogma of the veneration of icons was promulgated, pursued a brilliant go-
vernmental career under Copronymus. In fact, only the monks resisted the emperor‟s policy and
it was upon them that the weight of persecution fell.
It will be appropriate later to show that in this struggle with the monks another implica-
tion of the iconoclastic conflict comes into view, no longer purely a theological matter. Here one
need only stress that the monks proved to be the chief witnesses to truth; indeed, the lives of St.
Stephen the New or St. Andrew Kalivitus are illumined by an early Christian spirit. Along with
the attack on the monks, there was also a widespread destruction of icons themselves, which
were replaced by worldly art: hunting scenes, decorative designs, and the like. No one can guess
how the persecution would have ended, if the aged emperor-fanatic had not died in 775. Under
his son Leo IV the Khazar — though he, too, was a convinced iconoclast — the persecution died
down. A further shift took place when, after Leo‟s death, authority passed to his wife Irene (780-
802) because of the minority of his son, Constantine VI. She had always been a devotee of icons
and the monks, and began the preparations for an ecumenical council. To this end she installed as
patriarch Tarasius, the state secretary, a wise and moderate Orthodox. But fifty years of iconoc-
lasm had had a deep effect on Byzantine society. The first attempt to assemble the council in
Constantinople was frustrated by the soldiers, who worshiped the memory of Copronymus.

Seventh Ecumenical Council.
Only in 787, and not in the capital but in Nicaea, did the Seventh Ecumenical Council
assemble, with Patriarch Tarasius presiding. Here the dogma of the veneration of icons was for-
mulated and promulgated. The way had been paved for it by the reaction of Orthodox theological
thought to the years of iconoclasm; first and foremost by St. John of Damascus, who died in all
probability before the iconoclastic council of 753. John had lived in Syria under the rule of the
Arabs; he then became a monk in the monastery of St. Sabas in Palestine. He derived his defense
of icons directly from the Incarnation of Christ. Before He was made Man only symbols and
“shadows” were possible. In a certain sense the whole world is full of natural images of God, but
something completely new began from the moment that the Word became flesh.
When He Who is without a body and without form, Who has neither quantity nor magni-
tude, Who is incomparable with respect to the superiority of His nature, Who exists in Divine
form — accepts a bond-servant‟s appearance and arrays Himself in bodily form, then do thou
trace Him upon wood, and rest thy hopes in contemplating Him, Who has permitted Himself to
be seen.
An image of the Man Christ is also an image of God; as Florovsky has said, everything
that is human in Christ is now the living image of God. And in this union matter itself is made
new and becomes worthy of praise. “I do not bow down to matter, but to the Creator of matter,
Who for my sake took on substance and Who through matter accomplished my salvation, and I
shall not cease to honor matter, through which my salvation was accomplished.” This means that
everything in the world and the world itself has taken on a new meaning in the Incarnation of

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God. Everything has become open to sanctification; matter itself has become a channel of the
grace of the Holy Spirit.
This Christological definition of icons and their veneration forms the substance of the
dogma promulgated by the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The whole Christological dispute, in
fact, comes to a climax with this council, which gave it its final “cosmic” meaning.
We therefore, proceeding as it were along a royal road and following the God-revealing
teaching of the saints, our Fathers, and the tradition of the Catholic Church . . . with all circums-
pection and care do decree: that, like the image of the glorious and life-giving Cross, there shall
be placed in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and on
wood, in houses and along the roads, glorious and holy icons, painted in colors and made from
mosaic and out of other substance expedient to this matter — icons of the Lord Jesus Christ —
and . . . of the Mother of God . . . and of all saints and holy men.
22

The reverence rendered to these images is different from the “true devotion according to
the faith which befits the Divine nature alone”; the council defined it as a “worship of reve-
rence.” In it the “honor rendered to the image ascends to its prototype and he who reveres an
icon is worshiping the hypostasis of the one portrayed.” In this way the justification of the vene-
ration of icons concluded the dogmatic dialectic of the age of the universal councils, which was
concentrated, as we have already seen, on two fundamental themes of Christian revelation: the
Trinity and the Incarnation. In this respect the “faith of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and of
the Fathers” is the everlasting and immutable foundation of Orthodoxy.

Persecution by the Iconoclasts.
Although vanquished dogmatically, iconoclasm revived with new strength after the death
of Irene in 802. There were still supporters of the heresy, chiefly in government and military cir-
cles, where the glorious reign of Constantine Copronymus was remembered with intense admira-
tion. All the misfortunes and failures of the empire that came at the beginning of the ninth cen-
tury — wars, invasions, revolts — were blamed in such quarters on icon-worship. In 815 Empe-
ror Leo V the Armenian demanded of the Patriarch Nicephorus that the icons in churches should
be raised above human height, making it impossible to kiss them. From that instant all unders-
tood that a persecution was inevitable. But on this occasion the Church was not taken unawares:
the decree of the recent ecumenical council and the writings of the defenders of icon-veneration
had given it strength. The entire Church rose to the defense of Orthodoxy against the emperor.
The Patriarch Nicephorus was the first to suffer, but he had time to announce the imminent
struggle to the Church and summon it to resistance. He was deposed and exiled. The saintly
Theodore, abbot of the famous monastery of Studios in Constantinople, took his place at the
head of the Orthodox population. On Palm Sunday 815, thousands of Studite monks moved
through the city in procession, carrying icons. The gauntlet had been thrown down before the
state and a bloody persecution began. It produced more victims than the persecution of Copro-
nymus: scores of bishops exiled, monks drowned in sewn-up sacks or tormented in torture
chambers. Somewhat lessened in violence, this persecution continued under Leo‟s successors —
Michael II (820-29) and Theophilus (829-42) and after the year 834 the wave of terror gained
fresh intensity.

22
B.J. Kidd, Documents Illustrating the History of the Church, Vol. 3 (London and New York,
1938), p. 73.

107
The final victory of Orthodoxy once again came through a woman. The Empress Theodo-
ra, wife of Theophilus, halted the persecution immediately after her husband‟s death. In March
843, Methodius, one of the sufferers on behalf of icon-worship, took the patriarchal throne. On
the first Sunday in Lent the reinstatement of icons was proclaimed in the Cathedral of St. Sophia,
and this day has remained in the Church‟s memory as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy.” Each year on
this Sunday the Church celebrates its victory over the last of the great heresies and, solemnly
proclaiming the truth, excommunicates all those who do not acknowledge it.

Church and State in the Eighth Century —
The Issue of Monasticism.
But the dogmatic question of the meaning of icon-worship does not exhaust the signific-
ance of the iconoclastic upheaval. The vexing problem of Church-state relations became so acute
during the controversy as to reach a breaking point, and the synthesis of Justinian collapsed. In
itself the Church‟s conflict with a heretical emperor was nothing new, and St. John of Damascus
was only repeating the words of St. Maxim the Confessor when he declared, “It is not the busi-
ness of Caesar to engage in definitions of the faith.” The importance of iconoclasm lay in the fact
that it thoroughly revealed all the ambiguity of the union of Constantine; it exposed the pagan
and anti-Christian roots of the Byzantine theocracy in their fundamental form. The overthrow of
iconoclasm, therefore, became the starting point of a new synthesis, a union of Church and em-
pire, which was to determine the subsequent fate of the Byzantine world.
I have spoken of the significance of monasticism in the preceding era: at the moment
when the world was being Christianized, it embodied the eschatological aspect of Christianity as
the overcoming of the world by the light of the Kingdom “not of this world,” and by that very
light saving Christianity from falling into worldliness. From this standpoint there is nothing more
characteristic and noteworthy in the Church‟s relationship to the Christian world than the victory
of monasticism in that world and its acceptance as a norm of the Christian way. Not only the
Church, but even the empire yielded to monasticism: emperors vied with great noblemen in
creating monasteries, so that at the outset of the struggle with iconoclasm the number of monks
in Byzantium had reached a hundred thousand — an almost incredible percentage of the popula-
tion.
But if the empire accepted this victory of monasticism unreservedly, and safeguarded it
with every possible guarantee and privilege, monasticism in turn could not but become in the
course of time a real burden. Above all, it lay like a heavy load upon the economic life of the
state; tens of thousands of persons were lost to the army, the vast property of the monks escaped
taxation, a whole section of the population was found to be outside state control. Rather early in
Byzantine legislation we see attempts somehow to regulate this elemental fact and guide it into
normal channels of activity. In addition, the very triumph of monasticism proved harmful to it-
self; from the beginning of the seventh century there are increasing, unmistakable signs of dete-
rioration. The monasteries had grown rich, and privileges of every sort had now begun to attract
some who had little interest in the pursuit of Christian perfection. The monks who had become
the counselors, mentors, and confessors of the whole of Byzantine society were naturally often
exposed to the temptation of abusing this confidence. The decrees of the Trullan Synod paint a
rather disheartening picture in this regard.
But in the eighth century a spirit of heroism began to sweep abroad. The empire was pe-
rishing, and the Isaurian emperors saved it at the price of a terrible straining of all the forces of
the state; in this stress a new patriotic consciousness was born. This total mobilization — similar

108
to that of Russia under Peter the Great — was bound to give rise to questions about monasticism
and the monks. It seems obvious that Copronymus‟ hatred for the monks was not based simply
on their defense of icons. The division between two fundamental attitudes toward society, which
had poisoned relations between Church and empire from time immemorial, was becoming clear-
er and clearer. For some, the state was called upon to be the mainstay and earthly receptacle of
the Church, and therefore must submit to ecclesiastical values, even when such values were in
conflict with state interests. For others, Christianity itself was in the final analysis a state cult, the
religious support of the empire. The logic of the first attitude saw in monasticism a symbol of the
supernatural role of the Church and the inner freedom of Christian personality from the all-
absorbing utilitarianism of the state. The second attitude must sooner or later find monasticism
useless, and therefore also harmful to the state.
Behind the revolt against monasticism could be seen the desire of the Isaurians to subject
the Church entirely to the state and render it “useful” in every respect. In this regard the Isaurian
emperors were well suited to perfect that theocratic logic which had essentially prevailed in
Church-empire relations since the conversion of Constantine. Leo gave expression to that abso-
lutist state-consciousness in the preface to a new code of laws which he published: “The Lord,
having entrusted the realm to the emperors, hath likewise commanded them to tend Christ‟s
faithful flock, after the example of Peter, the chief of the Apostles.” Here is the final deduction
from the Justinian “harmony.”

Victory for the Monastic Principle.
The victory of icon-veneration, therefore, was also a victory for monasticism, an inward
triumph as well as an external one. Persecution had revived and renewed this aspect of the life of
the Church, and at the start of the ninth century we see a genuine flowering of Byzantine monas-
ticism, linked above all with the name of St. Theodore of Studios. It was he in particular who
finally formulated that definition of monasticism‟s function in the Church, which would consoli-
date its triumph forever. In his “system” it is clearly defined as a special ministry of the Church
(it had started as a private, lay, and individual movement). The monks were the Church‟s “nerves
and her support,” they were the “salt of the earth and the light of the world,” “a light for them
that sit in darkness,” “an example and a declaration.” This was true because the goal of the monk
was not different from that of the layman but the final goal of every Christian: the kingdom of
Heaven, the soul‟s salvation and one cannot save one‟s soul except by renouncing the world.
“To ask where it has been revealed to us that we should renounce the world and become
monks — an echo of iconoclastic doubts of the value of monasticism — is simply to ask where it
has been revealed to us that we should become Christians.”
23
We must not think that St. Theo-
dore saw salvation in monasticism alone; but he does assert that Christianity is impossible with-
out what in the Gospel is called renunciation. And indeed, history confirms the fact that actually
the Gospel‟s call to “the one thing necessary” has been realized only in the monastic life. Essen-
tially, all Christians are summoned to completely dedicated devotion, but historically this com-
pleteness is always being turned into minimalism, into compromise and worldly laxity. There-
fore, the monastic life is in its own way an historic shadow of Christianity which the Church will
continue to cast until it is fulfilled. According to St. Theodore, the monastery must be the active
inner kernel of the Church, a perpetual reminder of the Christian‟s ultimate calling and the
Church‟s support and affirmation. In Constantinople itself he revitalized the ancient monastery

109
of Studios, which soon became one of the chief centers of Byzantine Church life. Monastic life
was finally established in the heart of Byzantium.
This triumph also spelled the failure of the iconoclastic attempt to destroy the indepen-
dence of the Church, and simply to fit it into the theocratic framework. Historians have often mi-
sunderstood the meaning of this victory. “In the struggle for Orthodoxy,” Harnack wrote, “the
Church was victorious, in the struggle for freedom she was defeated.”
24
But what sort of freedom
is in question here? The monks were not fighting for the separation of Church and state — still
less for a clericalist subjection of the state to the Church — but only for that conception of theo-
cracy which, since the days of Constantine‟s conversion, had opened the arms of the Church so
broadly to the empire. In opposition to Harnack and all historians who measure Byzantium ac-
cording to Western criteria (which in fact did not exist in the West itself until considerably later),
it must be affirmed that the Church, not the empire, was victorious in this struggle. Of course,
there are no final victories in history; like the triumph over paganism under Constantine, this vic-
tory also had its negative aspects. But before mentioning them, we must try to pinpoint the es-
sence and significance of this new, late-Byzantine conception of theocracy. Only then shall we
have a reliable standard of judgment as to the success or failure of the Orthodoxy of Byzantium.

Late Byzantine Theocracy — The Church’s Version.
The theocratic conception of the Byzantine Church is expounded best of all in the Epa-
nagoge, an introduction to the code of laws published at the close of the ninth century by Empe-
ror Basil I the Macedonian, which was to remain until the end of the empire the fundamental law
on relations between Church and state. A comparison with Justinian‟s ideas shows the change
that had taken place in the state‟s understanding of itself. The Epanagoge also has as its starting
point the parallel position of emperor and patriarch — ”the most exalted and the most necessary
members of the realm” — and the obligations of each are defined.
The task of the Emperor is to safeguard and secure the strength of the nation by good go-
vernance, to restore this strength when it is impaired through watchful care, and to obtain new
strength by wisdom and by just ways and deeds. The aim of the Patriarch is first of all this —
that he is to preserve in piety and purity of life those people whom he has received from God; . . .
he must, where there is opportunity, convert all heretics to Orthodoxy and the unity of the
Church . . . further, he must lead unbelievers into adopting the faith, astounding them with the
splendor and the glory and the wondrousness of his own devotion . . . The Emperor must perform
beneficial acts, wherefore he is also called benefactor . . . The aim of the Patriarch is the salva-
tion of the souls entrusted to him; he must live by Christ and strive wholeheartedly for peace . . .
The Emperor must be of the highest perfection in Orthodoxy and piety . . . versed in the dogmas
concerning the Holy Trinity and in the definitions concerning salvation through the Incarnation
of Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . It is natural for the Patriarch to be a teacher and to treat high and
low alike without restraint . . . and to speak of the truthfulness and safeguarding of dogmas be-
fore the face of the Emperor without confusion . . . The Patriarch alone must interpret the max-
ims of the ancients, the definitions of the Holy Fathers, and the statutes of the Holy Councils . . .
It is for the Emperor also to support, first, all that is written in Holy Scripture, then all dogmas
established by the seven Holy Councils, and also selected Roman laws.
25

110
Several scholars have inferred from the Epanagoge a full and final blending of Church
and empire into a single Church-state body, the crowning of the process begun by Justinian. Its
text would appear to justify such an interpretation. But commentary usually goes no further than
a simple statement of this fact, while the Epanagoge is equally concerned about overcoming the
harmful aspect of the Justinian “harmony” of Church and state. In one sense a fusion really did
occur: all members of the Church were subjects of the empire, the borders of Church and empire
coincided. But does this mean that they constituted a single organism, headed by a diarchy of
emperor and patriarch? It must not be forgotten that the Epanagoge was political law, and spoke
of the state, not the Church. This state, because it was Christian, was organically linked with the
Church, and the same bond was exemplified in the diarchy of emperor and patriarch. The mean-
ing of this diarchy lay in the fact that, apart from his position in the Church as defined in the ca-
nons, the patriarch now had a special position in the governmental structure: his place was ana-
logous to that of the emperor. He was in some sense the Church‟s representative in the state, the
guardian of its Orthodoxy and faithfulness to Christianity, a guarantee of the empire‟s Ortho-
doxy. He alone, therefore, had a right to teach and interpret Church doctrine, and the state itself
charged him with the defense of the Orthodox faith before the emperor himself.
Of the emperor the Epanagoge required only fidelity to Orthodoxy — to her doctrine
concerning Christ and the Trinity. One must emphasize that in the Byzantine vision of the ideal,
Church and state were not connected by a juridical definition and delimitation of their spheres of
action, but by the Orthodox faith: the faith and doctrine of the Church, which the empire had ac-
cepted as its own. And the fountainhead of this doctrine, its custodian and interpreter, was the
Church and not the empire.

Outward Signs.
Hallowed by its Orthodoxy, the empire was of course no longer an object of indifference
to the Church, and its special, sacred purpose was manifest in the position which the emperor, for
his part, held in it. This was symbolized in his coronation ceremony, which from the ninth cen-
tury on can be considered as in its own way a liturgical expression of Byzantine theocracy. A
vital moment was the emperor‟s profession of faith and his oath to maintain the faith in its entire-
ty. The imperial power had finally ceased to be the one reflection in the world of divine power
and was now itself subject to the truth preserved by the Church.
In all probability the ceremony of Anointing became in the ninth century the fundamen-
tal, operative moment of the coronation. This conferring of a special charisma upon the emperor
by the Church for the governance of the empire did not signify the politicization of the Church,
but — even if only symbolically — the clericalization of the empire. The emperor bowed his
head, and the patriarch with his own hand placed the crown upon him, saying, “In the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” — to which the people would answer, “Holy, Holy,
Holy! Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth!” The Byzantine emperor‟s special part in
divine service is often mentioned as though he had a particularly sacred or even a sacerdotal po-
sition in the Church. Those who discuss this point most are apt to know least about it. As the
Russian Byzantine scholar, D.F. Belyaev, has skillfully demonstrated, this participation was ac-
tually quite unimportant and devoid of any priestly significance.
26
He kept the right, which had
once belonged to all laymen, of entering the apse so as to bring his offering to the altar. The six-

111
ty-ninth decree of Trullan Synod, sanctioning this right, speaks of the exception made in this
case for the emperor, but stresses that the right belongs to the lay status in general.
It is clear that one cannot simply equate Byzantine theocracy with either the subjection of
the Church to the state, or the subjection of the state to the Church (for which the medieval popes
struggled), although both tendencies too often appear as its sinful distortions. If the empire had
received the faith from the Church and was consecrated by that faith, the Church in turn, without
being false to its mystical and sacramental independence, had entered into the empire, had
charged it with protecting and safeguarding the Church and even with its earthly organization. In
this sense it is true that henceforth Church and empire would comprise a singe whole: “unmixed
and inseparable.” This did not occur through a confusion of ideas, since confusion, along with
iconoclasm, had been surmounted, but on the contrary, out of the perfectionism of the Church,
which felt itself to be an “icon of Christ” for the world, but did not assume earthly power, nor
take upon itself the organization of man‟s life.
Nothing testifies so convincingly that the empire had now overcome the old poisons of
pagan theocracy as the breakdown in official imperial art during this period.
27
Until the eighth
century the forms of the ancient imperial cult were still predominant in likenesses of the empe-
ror. Always he was the same emperor-conqueror and sovereign, knowing no restriction to his
power, the personification of victory as he had been in pagan iconography. But pagan symbols of
victory were replaced after Constantine by Christian ones. The empire conquered now under the
sign of the Cross — ”In this sign conquer” — as it had conquered before under other emblems,
but in its political consciousness it did not yet feel the victory of Christ over itself, and the old
triumphal motifs gained ground in the official symbolism of the iconoclastic emperors. But now
with the triumph of Orthodoxy we see a sudden change, almost a leap forward. “The overwhelm-
ing majority of the imperial portraits of this era,” writes Grabar, “belong to the type „The Empe-
ror before Christ‟ one that is very rare and exceptional in the pre-iconoclastic period. The trium-
phal cycle yields to a cycle which glorifies first and foremost the emperor‟s piety, and not his
victory.”
28
It is no longer an image of the absolute sovereign of an empire, but an icon of the By-
zantine theocracy.
Thus the triumph of Orthodoxy was not a mere return to Justinian‟s formula, but
represented an inner regeneration of it. The empire had been and remained holy, but the source
of this sacred character had previously been the ancient and absolute conception of the state as
the reflection on earth of divine order. Now it became the recognition of the empire as a hand-
maiden of Christ. This was set forth and made manifest in a variety of ways in Byzantine liturgy.
For example, the Eucharistic prayer of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great includes the following:
Lord, think upon the mighty and Christ-loving Emperor whose reign upon earth Thou
hast justified: gird him with the armament of truth and good will, shield him in the day of battle,
strengthen his sinews, uplift his right hand, hold fast his realm, subject unto him all barbarous
peoples that desire war, grant him a profound peace that cannot be taken away, declare to his
heart the good of Thy Church and of all Thy people, so that in his peace we may live a tranquil
and quiet life in all piety and purity . . .
It is evinced in the spirit of the Byzantine army, which now became the “Christ-loving
army” defending the “domicile” of Christ — that is to say, defending the earthly mainstay of the
Church; it is reflected in the ritual of the court, which was wholly directed toward expressing the

112
mission of the empire. Christ was Pantocrator, Creator, and Lord, and before Him knelt with
upraised hands and bowed head the Byzantine emperor — here was something new in the image
of the empire, which became the spirit of its consciousness in the final epoch of its history.
One must not think this was only ideology; in its own way, it was very deeply reflected in
psychology and everyday life — in the entirety of that genuinely Church-centered atmosphere in
which Byzantine society lived and breathed. Of course, so many sins are connected with this Or-
thodox way of life and so much falsehood was hidden beneath its outward guise, that a modern
reader of history, looking back, is tempted to see in it only hypocrisy — only the stifling atmos-
phere of an external ecclesiasticism and faith in ritual. But he would be forgetting the goodness
and light that were thus introduced into Byzantine life in an age when, politically and socially,
the world was still only beginning to discover the explosive force of the Gospel. The ideals of
mercy, love of poverty, and charity are not as sharply reflected in Byzantine chronicles as are the
crimes by which political history was often made, and have therefore been ignored by historians.
But one may speak, nevertheless, of a special sort of Byzantine humanism, linked undoubtedly to
the feeling of Christ‟s constant presence in the world in all His aspects: as King, Savior, Teacher,
and Judge.

Inherent Weaknesses.
The dimensions of the victory, of course, should not be exaggerated. Against the back-
ground of this theory, in its own way great and beautiful, all the countless retreats and distortions
that took place in reality now seem too ugly. True, no emperor will again dare to impose heresy
on the Church as Byzantine emperors from Constantine to Theophilus had done (with the excep-
tion of the question of union with Rome, but this sore subject we shall explore later), and the
Church‟s voice was to sound stronger than it had before. Like the state in the Church, the Church
in the state would now acquire a new and more important position. Such patriarchs as Photius or
Nicholas the Mystic were statesmen who did not confine themselves to the ecclesiastical sphere
but took a fully qualified part in the solution of important matters of state, including dynastic and
even military problems.
But the completely arbitrary nature of state authority always remained an incurable sore
in Church life; still worse was the almost equally complete acceptance of this arbitrariness by the
Church hierarchy. It was as though, having isolated its dogmatic doctrine in an inviolable holy of
holies, protected by vows and with the empire itself subjected to it, the Church no longer felt any
limit to imperial authority. It was as though, having become completely Orthodox, the emperor
could now do anything that suited him in the Church.
There are too many instances during these centuries of this arbitrary use of power, of ca-
pitulations of the Church, for even a simple enumeration to be possible. Their tragic series began
almost immediately in the clash between the patriarchs Photius and Ignatius, which may serve as
something of a symbol for all ensuing crises.
29
Each twice ascended the patriarchal throne and on
both occasions was driven from it by a simple command of the emperor. Each in his own way
offered opposition, met arbitrary power with a passive firmness. Each was personally virile and
reflected in himself a certain truth of the Church. Nor did the entire hierarchy submit; many had
the strength to prefer exile to surrender. Nevertheless, the Church as a whole accepted all this
manipulation almost as if it were equitable. Not a single voice rose in defense of the Church‟s

113
essential freedom; apparently no one now felt keenly its mystical independence of the state, in
whose name so much blood had been shed a hundred years before.
We have seen already the quite exceptional importance achieved by the patriarch of Con-
stantinople in the Eastern Church by the end of the seventh century. But the further time
progresses, the fewer traces does he leave in history; little by little these traces are reduced to the
mere listing of names. Of course exceptions are encountered. But it is enough to compare, for
example, the tenth century — the era of the Macedonian dynasty — with the twelfth, the age of
the Comneni. The remarkable patriarchs of the iconoclastic epoch — Germanos, Tarasius, Nice-
phorus, Methodius — are followed by no less eminent men: Ignatius, Photius, Nicholas the Mys-
tic (who was victorious over Emperor Leo VI in the question of the latter‟s fourth marriage), and
Polyeuctus. In the eleventh century we still meet with such princes of the Church as Michael Ce-
rularius (under whom communion with Rome was finally severed). Of course not all patriarchs
in these centuries can be compared to these figures of the first rank. One may point to the scan-
dalous Patriarch Stephen (a brother of Emperor Leo VI — elevated to the patriarchate at the age
of nineteen), and in particular to Theophilactus, son of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who
for thirty years shamed the Byzantine Church with his disgraceful behavior. But after 1081,
when Alexius Comnenus ascended the throne, the patriarchs seem to withdraw into the back-
ground. We find very meager information about them in the Byzantine chronicles through which
we establish their names, their chief “acts” and the years in which they were appointed or died. A
curve could be traced, showing a gradually fading image of the patriarch side by side with the
ever-increasing splendor of the basileus, as the Eastern emperors were called. And this is not ac-
cidental. It gives proof that the scales of the unattainable harmony were inclined in the direction
of imperial power.
It is important to emphasize that this painful weakness cannot be explained solely in
terms of the government‟s coercing the Church — in terms of the superiority of physical force,
so to speak, as at the beginning of the Constantinian union. This was an inner, organic weakness
of the representatives of the Church. Their dual situation made them not just the victims but also
the agents of their own destiny. The thirst for a sacred theocracy, the desire to illumine the sinful
stuff of history with the light of Christ; everything that could justify the union of Church and
empire — this ideal required for its attainment a very subtle but very clear distinction between
the Church and the world. For the Church is thoroughly fulfilling its mission to transform the
world only when it completely feels itself to be a kingdom not of this world.
The tragedy of the Byzantine Church consisted precisely in the fact that it became merely
the Byzantine Church, that it merged itself with the empire not so much administratively as,
above all, psychologically, in its own self-awareness. The empire became for it the absolute and
supreme value, unquestioned, inviolable, and self-evident. The Byzantine hierarchs — like the
Russian, later on — were simply incapable of going beyond the categories of the sacred empire,
of appraising it in the light of the life-giving freedom of the Gospel. Everything became sacred
and everything was justified through this sacred character. One could shut one‟s eyes to sin and
evil — these things were simply the result of “men‟s frailty”; there remained a heavy embroidery
of sacred symbols which converted the whole of life into a solemn ritual, lulling and gilding over
conscience itself.
Theoretical perfectionism, completeness of dedication, led in an ironic way to a minimiz-
ing of morality. On his deathbed the black monk‟s robe shrouded all the emperor‟s sins, the out-
cry of conscience found relief in the liturgical confession of impurity. Everything — even peni-
tence, even the conviction of sin — had its order, and in this Christian world with its pall woven

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of gold, frozen in a kind of motionless ceremonial, there no longer remained any place for the
simple, bare, incorruptibly sober judgment of the most artless book in the world: “For where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The real tragedy of the Byzantine Church lies, not
in the arbitrary rule of emperors, or its own sins, but in the fact that the real treasure that filled its
heart completely, and subjected everything to itself, became — the empire. It was not force that
vanquished the Church, but the temptation of “flesh and blood.” The Church‟s consciousness
came under the spell of an earthly illusion, an earthly affection.

The Conservative Trend.
With this assimilation of the Church to government and empire — not only external but
internal and psychological — was linked a certain polarization of thought that characterized this
period: a dichotomy between two basic tendencies in theology and religious experience.
First, there is no doubt that the era of the ecumenical councils, the time of creative ten-
sion in ecclesiastical thinking, ended with the iconoclastic controversy. The desire to fix Ortho-
doxy in some precise and final formula is intrinsically connected with the relations between
Church and state. One need only recall the after-effects of the theological disputes of the fourth
and fifth centuries, as a result of state interference. This does not mean that theological develop-
ment within the Church came about by the initiative of the state. But the state tried to turn to its
own advantage themes, which had been developed in the speculations of the Church. From the
very start we can sense in these disputes a state motif, as it were — a principle of requiring reli-
gious unanimity for the peace of the state. This had been the point of view of Constantine him-
self, for all his personal devotion. As time went on, the motif became stronger. The fevers of dis-
pute and heresy that shook the body of the Church shook the organism of the state as well. The
government was increasingly determined to reduce all differences of opinion to a common de-
nominator, not so much from disinterested love of truth as for preservation of the integrity of the
multinational empire, where any religious discontent immediately flared up into a fire of ethnic
and political passions and separatisms of all sorts. From this drive to control the troubled waters
of racial elements came all the endless attempts to find a compromise with Monophysitism,
which led the state into religious relativism. Too frequently it did not seek the truth, but rather
peace and unanimity at any cost.
The victory over iconoclasm marked the turning point in this respect. While previously
the emperors had been mainly concerned with finding a confessional minimum acceptable to all
the diverse sections of the empire, the necessity of seeking such a minimum now disappeared of
itself; religious unity was achieved at the price of the loss of all dissidents and the diminution of
the empire. State authority had finally become Orthodox. In addition, it was fully aware of its
mission, entrusted to it by God: the meticulous preservation of Orthodoxy in all its inviolability
and purity. Previously, the emperors had shown initiative in clarifying the faith, and theologized
in order to obtain general consent; now the consent was achieved, since all protesting masses
were outside the imperial borders.
This new situation required a new policy. Bitter experience had shown that each religious
divergence brought a threat of shock within the state as well. Now the basic concern of the empe-
rors became the desire not to allow any religious disturbance, but to foster a sort of religious sta-
tus quo. Orthodoxy coincided with conservatism down to the very letter of tradition. Iconoclasm
revealed for the last time the dangerous fact that religious passions could turn into political dis-
cord. This experience was crucial. Naturally the Church, which had always longed for dogmatic

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unanimity and harmony with its “external bishop,” joyously accepted the conservative policy of
the state; here were rooted all the preconditions for its whole subsequent theological life.

Official Theology.
The time had come in the history of Byzantium when both Church and state took the past
into account — when this past had changed from something recent and familiar into antiquity,
had become hallowed by age, and had developed psychologically into a sort of eternal ideal —
not so much an inspiration to future creativity as a demand that the Church should constantly re-
turn to it and submit to it. With the silent consent of Church and state, a sort of psychological
full-stop was now placed at the end of the account, and the total summed up. Each new reference
to theological themes and each posing of new questions now had to be referred to the past. The
tradition of the holy Fathers, confirmation by their authority even if only outwardly by means of
references and quotations — sometimes even torn out of context — became a kind of guarantee
of reliability. In the work of the last great Father of the Church, St. John of Damascus, we perce-
ive this concern to refer everything to the past and to the Fathers — to rely on a consensus pa-
trum. “His De Fide Orthodoxa has remained the summation of Greek theology, to which nothing
was added and in which little change was made in subsequent centuries,” writes one historian.
Later Byzantium tacitly acknowledged that the catholic truth of the Church had been formulated,
once and for all, by the ancient Fathers and the seven ecumenical councils. Even new misunders-
tandings, new false doctrines or questions, must be answered from the same storehouse; in the
treasure chests of the writings of the Fathers must be sought the answers to all questions.
This backward-looking tendency was fundamental to the stream of Byzantine religious
thought which may be labeled “official” or “school” theology. Its basic assignment was to prove
that everything had been decided, and that reference to the past was the sole guarantee of Ortho-
doxy. But there is no reason to minimize the significance or contributions of this official theolo-
gy; it bore witness to the undoubtedly high level of Byzantine ecclesiastical culture, to spiritual
and intellectual interests that had never been extinguished, and to the constant concern for en-
lightenment, schools, and books that made medieval Byzantium the cultural center of the world
— to which we are indebted for the transmission of all ancient Christian tradition.
The beginning of this official current of Byzantine theology may be attributed to the cul-
tural renaissance that occurred in the second half of the tenth century and was centered in the
university in Constantinople. From this circle of scholars and theologians, assembled by Caesar
Bardas, came the “father of Byzantine theology,” the Patriarch Photius. He combined genuine
theological talent, shown in his polemic against the Western doctrine of the Holy Spirit, with the
academicism that was typical of his followers. His knowledge, was universal and legendary, and
he created a whole galaxy of scholars and theologians; from among his associates came St. Con-
stantine the Philosopher, brother of Methodius, the apostle to the Slavs. His Amphilochia was a
typical example of theological writing, entirely based on patristic quotations.
In the tenth century, under the emperors Leo the Wise and Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
the palace at Constantinople was a center of intense intellectual activity, but the dominant inter-
ests were antiquarian, archeological, and bibliographical. “In this period we know of no authori-
tative name nor any original composition,” writes an historian of the reign of Leo the Wise. From
the point of view of transmitting tradition and culture, the contributions were enormous, but from
the creative point of view they were weak.

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A Vital Liturgy.
Most important for the Church was the liturgical work that marked these centuries. First
come the names of St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore of Studios. In Church tradition John
is considered the composer of the Octoechos, the collection of hymns divided into eight tones or
melodies. An immense number of contributions are ascribed to him, not all correctly. His litur-
gical poetry is very remarkable in form and content, and its influence was decisive for the writ-
ing of Byzantine hymns. Characteristic features are the Damascene‟s effort to fix the service in a
definite pattern, and the almost complete dependence of his theological themes on the tradition
of the Fathers. The Byzantine service, as already observed, is a blend of the dogmatic achieve-
ments of the preceding period in liturgical form. It is almost entirely adorned with the colors of
the Trinity and of Christology.
The same sense of completion and fixedness may be remarked in the liturgical activity of
the center at Studios, headed by St. Theodore. This produced the Triodion, the hymns and orders
of service for the periods of Great Lent and Easter. Here the Typicon, or service manual, was
gradually put together in an effort to fix the services more and more securely. Each Byzantine
generation would only have to fill in the empty places in the pattern.
The liturgical heritage of Byzantium is so immense that we cannot expect it to contain
only masterpieces. There were a great many rhetorical exercises, repetitions, and imitations. As a
whole it was a magnificent structure, with much of surpassing beauty and profundity of thought.
In the Typicon itself — or rather the Typica, since there were a great number of them — if one
can decode their secret language, a whole philosophy of Christian life emerges, and very fine,
well-thought-out Christian concepts. We need only point to the luminous beauty of the Easter
service, the abundance of liturgical cycles, those for Christmas, Lent, and the feasts of Mary, or
to the theological profundity of the Triodion or the Octoechos (the book of liturgy for the varia-
tions in service during the rest of the year).
For centuries these liturgical riches were to be the main source of knowledge and reli-
gious life and inspiration in the Orthodox world, and in the darkest ages, when traditions were
broken and education became rare, people in the Church would rediscover again and again the
spirit of universal, all-embracing, and inexhaustibly profound Orthodoxy in its golden age. All
spiritual culture, all theological erudition of a Byzantine or of a citizen of Holy Russia, was ac-
quired in the Church and in the living experience of the divine service. There were no semina-
ries, academies, or theological faculties; but devout monks and Christians drank the living waters
of divine knowledge from hymnology. During the all-night vigil services, matins, and vespers, to
the sounds of the ancient chants, there developed a reverence that was strong and unshakable,
and an Orthodox outlook that was expressed in life and action and did not remain only a misty
philosophical theory. These treasures were gathered in the churches, and men and women, expe-
riencing them reverently, arranged their pattern and way of life accordingly.
Without doubt the liturgical contributions were the highest achievement of Byzantine Or-
thodoxy; they indicate the profound understanding and assimilation of the dogmatic insights of
the preceding age and the inner continuity of life and tradition. Nevertheless, this theology is on-
ly the expression in beautiful forms of the experience of the past, fixing it in a system of divine
services. Everything really new that was introduced into this pattern in the Byzantine period was
usually very much weaker and more rhetorical, or only decoration in a certain sense — the lux-
uriant flowering of liturgical symbolism, the elaboration of ceremonies, the sometimes unneces-
sary prolongation of prayers and hymns of an earlier period which had been classic in their suc-

117
cinctness and expressiveness. Mutatis mutandis, later Byzantine liturgical contributions were ba-
roque by comparison with the transparent simplicity of pure Byzantinism.
An analogous effort to systematize tradition may be seen in the work of Simeon Metaph-
rastes of the tenth century, the codifier of the lives of saints; or that of Oecumenius, a well-
known Byzantine exegete. Here everything is Orthodox and traditional, very frequently beautiful
and ingenious, but nothing is added to what has already been said by the ancient authors. Still
more typical is the celebrated document of the twelfth century, era of the Comneni: the Panoply
of Euthymius Zigabenus, a model of official theology. After that time such works became more
frequent; they were theological collections of answers and arguments for all occasions. In the
capital and at court there were many disputes on theological themes, but they were glitteringly
poetic debates, not genuine discussions of “the one thing necessary.” “It was the fashion to speak
about theology,” wrote an historian. “The court competed with the clergy, professional theolo-
gians were zealous in searching for new themes and in searching the Scriptures for problems
with which to confound their opponents . . .”

New Hellenization.
Official theology was characterized by this spirit until the end of the empire. There were
periods when it flourished: the time of the empire of Nicaea (thirteenth century) or of the Paleo-
logi (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). It is even customary to speak of the “renaissance” of the
Paleologi, reflected as we know in the Western Renaissance. Yet in this cultural renewal the
Christian themes are weakest. Dying Byzantium would fertilize the West, not with the light of
Orthodoxy but with Hellenic antiquity — with Plato and Plotinus! For in Byzantium itself in the
last years of its existence we perceive a sudden return to pure Hellenism and to philosophical
problems that once seemed to be solved in patristic theology. The connecting link between By-
zantium and the West, just before the fall of the empire, was not their common Christian heritage
but the neopaganism of Gemistus Plethon, the founder of the Platonic academy in Florence, the
high priest of Hellenism for all Italy.
This was the price paid for official theology, the preservative spirit that triumphed in By-
zantine Orthodoxy. When Church doctrine became state authority to which one must submit by
obligation, the Greek mind began to seek new nourishment in pre-Christian philosophy, with
which it had become familiar on the school bench. What had previously been only a subject for
study in school — gymnastics for the mind — now again acquired independent interest and came
to life as an arena for problems that could not be posed in religious terms. The faith remained,
inviolable and beyond doubt, but intellectual interest in it disappeared; the urge to comprehend it
intellectually was stifled.
Yet again, but in a new form, there arose a dichotomy between Christianity and Hellen-
ism. This had earlier been a conflict from which Christianity by its creative efforts emerged the
victor. Now there was no longer even a conflict; no one rejected or criticized Christianity. The
Byzantine philosophical renaissance developed alongside Christianity and parallel to it, as a
completely autonomous sphere. The cast of mind of Michael Psellus, a pioneer in philosophy at
the end of the eleventh century, is characteristic of the new humanistic spirit. He taught about the
nature of God according to Orpheus, Zoroaster, Ammon, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato;
the break with theology seems complete. Yet this did not prevent him from writing theological
tracts in the most reverent and classic spirit. As with Gemistus Plethon, the neopagan philosophy
he created did not prevent him from defending Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence in 1438-39.
The practice, if not the theory, of a double truth developed in Byzantium, and this was the

118
strongest symptom of the theological crisis. Christianity had failed to satisfy the needs of the By-
zantine; its spiritual integrity had been violated, and a certain part of it — the creative part, in-
deed — drew it to another, non-Christian world.
The Byzantine Church responded to this philosophical renaissance more than once by
interdictions and anathemas, but official theology proved incapable of overcoming it from with-
in, by a new creative synthesis. Whatever the contributions of this theology, they could not of
course replace the creative enthusiasm by which “the ancient books are forever animated,” the
books of the great Fathers and Doctors, memorials to the theological spring of Church history.
Knowledge and assimilation cannot replace experience.

Monastic Theology.
Everything so far discussed refers to the upper stratum of the Byzantine Church, which
was in direct contact with the empire and firmly bound by the political-ecclesiastical ideology
that prevailed after the triumph of Orthodoxy. Yet it would be as historically incorrect to judge
Byzantium by this aspect alone as to evaluate the synodal period in the history of the Russian
Church, for example, solely on the basis of minutes of the sessions of the Holy Synod, or by se-
minary textbooks copied from Latin models. For while Latin scholasticism predominated in the
Russian seminaries, St. Seraphim of Sarov was revealing in his talks with Motovilov his pro-
found doctrine of the Holy Spirit; and a fugitive from the Kievan seminary, Paissy Velichkovsky,
by his life as an elder was preparing the way for the renaissance of Russian monasticism. So in
Byzantium, while official theology became more and more a scholastic commentary on the texts
of the Holy Fathers, another genuine tradition, eternally alive and creative, continued to survive
in the monasteries. It is usually called Byzantine mysticism, but was in fact only a continuation
of the original trend of theological speculation: the disclosure of the content of faith in the expe-
rience of life.
This was the case in the theology of St. Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022), whose
life has been described by his disciple, Nicetas Stethatos. He has left us hymns, letters, and ascet-
ic and theological treatises. It was of course a specifically monastic theology, dedicated wholly
to the description of illuminations and mystical contemplation — to that “communion with the
Divine Light” which had been the purpose of monastic asceticism from the start. “Being in a
state of illumination, the holy man is completely on fire with the Holy Spirit, and even in this
anticipates the mystery of his deification.” Grace appears with all possible stillness and joy, and
this light is the preparation for the Eternal Light, the radiance of eternal bliss. The mind plunges
into it, is clarified, is itself made light, and unites completely with the Source of light Himself.
Although this is a theology of renunciation and solitary ascent to God, in the life of the
Church it was even more important and influential than official theology. In these spiritual elders
the Church experienced the extreme of freedom from the world — a freedom from the evaluation
of all worldly things completely lacking in her close marriage to the empire. This was theology
from experience, not from books, and through it the practical significance of Christianity was
reanimated as a struggle for human reality.
A good illustration is the conflict between St. Simeon and the officials of the Constanti-
nople patriarchate over his veneration of his deceased teacher and mentor, a conflict between spi-
ritual freedom and the spirit of the consistory, which could not tolerate any departure from the
routine of official ecclesiastical life. The solitary hermit was persecuted, sent into exile, suffered
oppression; but in the final account he and not the consistory was victorious. The mind of Ortho-

119
doxy eventually recognized him as a real witness to its faith and hopes. Less than a hundred
years after his death, St. Simeon was venerated by the whole Eastern Church.

Mt. Athos.
Beginning with the tenth century, the “Holy Mountain,” Athos, became the main center
of Byzantine monasticism and also of this speculative tendency in Orthodox theology. So it has
remained to the present day. The settlement of hermits on Athos began very early, possibly as
soon as the fourth century. Here, too, monasticism passed through all the phases of its develop-
ment: the life of the hermit; later the laura, which combined solitary asceticism with some com-
munity; and finally monasteries with a strictly regulated life. The founder of this regulated mo-
nasticism on Athos is considered to be St. Athanasius of Athos, in whose time the famous laura
that bears his name was established (960). In the twelfth century, under Emperor Alexius Com-
nenus, Athos was finally sanctioned as the recognized center of Byzantine monasticism.
All the threads of speculative theology by which Eastern monasticism had lived since the
time of the desert Fathers converged here, and in the late Byzantine period Athos was the center
of an intense theological life. Nothing so reveals the dichotomy in theological thinking of Byzan-
tium — the whole difference between official theology and the theology of experience — as the
disputes over “hesychasm” that began on Mt. Athos in the fourteenth century, associated with the
name of St. Gregory Palamas. Outwardly the dispute concerned almost technical problems of
ascetic practices, the so-called hesychia through which the “gathering of the mind” is achieved
and the contemplation of the Divine Light is attained. Very soon, however, the basic question
was asked: What does the holy man contemplate, see, and commune with? The opponents of He-
sychasm felt that in the theology of “deification,” or union with God, the bounds between crea-
tion and God were erased, that in its extremes the Hesychast doctrine of the uncreated Light on
Mt. Tabor bordered on pantheism. The dispute came to concern the theological question of the
nature of the light of the Transfiguration.

The Mystical Root of Theology.
St. Gregory Palamas, a monk of Athos and later archbishop of Thessalonica (1296-
1359), undoubtedly a very great Byzantine theologian, came to the defense of the Hesychasts.
Catholic historians have frequently interpreted his doctrine as an unprecedented innovation in the
history of Orthodox theology, expressing all the extremes and peculiarities of Eastern mysticism.
As recent research has well demonstrated, however, in fact it only completes and renews in a
creative way the most authentic and basic tendency in the Orthodox view of Christianity. This is
the conception that God really is present in the world, that we perceive Him and unite with Him,
not by abstract deductions or philosophically, but ontologically. In this defense of real union with
God lies the meaning of the doctrine of Palamas on divine energies that permeate the world,
through which the world, without merging with God — essentially impossible — is united with
Him and can commune with Him, have Him within itself, and endlessly grow nearer to Him. The
whole tradition of the Fathers of the Church was revived in the experience of Hesychasm and the
theology of Palamas: in the image of the God-Man in Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
Christianity is revealed as a vision of the fullness of God in the essence of man, and in this full-
ness, of the “communion with God” of everything in the world.
For St. Simeon the New Theologian and for St. Gregory Palamas — to limit ourselves
only to these two pinnacles of Byzantine mysticism — the authority of the Fathers stood just as
high as it did for the theologians of the patriarchal school in Constantinople. But they had no rea-

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son to question the tradition of the Holy Fathers. For them it was not an outward authority requir-
ing blind submission. They lived in the tradition and perceived it from within as a unity of faith
and experience; they were aware of it as the fruit of the same Spirit that had inspired the Fathers
as well. For them, as for the earlier Fathers, theology was not abstract knowledge but the “work
of life and the creative solution of vital problems.” They were free, precisely because they had in
themselves and their religious experience the criterion for their unity in faith with the Fathers and
with tradition. Though the way of mysticism is a special one, set apart in a special sphere of the-
ology, all genuine theology is mystical at the root, since it is primarily evidence of religious ex-
perience. In the course of spiritual endeavor, creativeness, and effort the strength of true tradition
is revealed. Otherwise it turns into a dead historical document, binding the mind with abstract
and meaningless formulas.
Thus the limitation imposed on official Byzantine theology by the external authority of
texts resulted in a renewed outbreak of “dechristianized” Hellenism on the one hand and of con-
flict with the Hesychasts on the other. Prof. F. I. Uspensky has attempted to reduce all these con-
troversies to a struggle between two fundamental philosophical positions which, he alleges, de-
fine the history of Byzantine thought: Aristotelianism and Platonism.
30
The philosophers and
mystics, he maintains, stem from Plato, while the official doctrine of the Church, including that
of St. John of Damascus, is expressed in the language of Aristotle. The fallacy of such a pattern
has been demonstrated a number of times. For example, one of Palamas‟ main enemies, Nice-
phorus Gregoras, was by philosophy a convinced Platonist. Actually the question of whom to
follow in the structure of Christian dogmatics — Plato or Aristotle — could not arise for Palamas
or St. Simeon. For them the primary reality was Christian revelation and that theory of contem-
plation, which they attempted to fix in words, but for which of course neither Plato nor Aristotle
could be completely adequate. Palamas could refer to both Plato and Aristotle and criticize both,
because neither had defined his religious experience, yet both are evaluated on the basis of it.
Christian theology by its very essence was necessarily eclectic in its relation to pre-Christian phi-
losophy, however highly it might honor it and boldly utilize the language to express its own “in-
expressible mysteries.” Therefore the synthesis with Hellenism and the absorption of it into the
Church which had taken place in the writings of the Fathers was naturally revived in Byzantine
mysticism.
The latter was the chief and most valuable tendency in Byzantium‟s spiritual heritage,
and down to the present day it has continued to fertilize the religious consciousness of Ortho-
doxy. The Councils of 1351 and 1368 in Constantinople, which confirmed “Palamism” as a true
expression of the faith of the Church and consecrated to sainthood Palamas himself (to whose
memory the second Sunday in Great Lent is dedicated), therefore represent the spiritual peak of
Byzantine Orthodoxy.

Basic Church Unity.
In Church history the late Byzantine period is still known as the “era of the division of
the churches,” and the label is of course appropriate to the full significance of this great tragedy
of Christian history. In a certain sense the whole life of Byzantium inherited the stigma of this
event, and the experience of the division, which took place at that time still colors the relations
between the Orthodox East and Rome.

30
F.I Uspensky, Studies in the History of Byzantine Education (in Russian, St. Petersburg, 1892).

121
One may study the division of the churches in two aspects: the historical and the dogmat-
ic. Historically it was a very complex matter, and only by approaching it dishonestly or from a
partisan viewpoint can one place the whole guilt on either side and justify the other accordingly.
Dogmatically it does not matter so much just how the churches came to be divided, as what es-
sentially divided them: those assertions of the Roman Church — first about itself (the dogma of
papal infallibility), and then about the faith of the Church (the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and of
the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin) — which the Orthodox regarded as contradictory to
the basic truth of Christianity. But for good understanding we must first investigate the history of
this division.
I have spoken of the unity of the early Church, and how it was perceived in the psycholo-
gy of early Christians as not only the form but in a very real sense the content of Christianity.
Christ had come to gather the scattered children of God into one, to unite those who had been
separated by “natural” causes into a supernatural unity of the new people of God, in whom “there
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is either bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This unity Was embodied in the unity of each local Church,
which in its assembly headed by the bishop showed forth the form of one Body, with Christ as its
head; and also in the unity of all churches, which were linked by one faith, one apostolic succes-
sion, one life. The joy in this unity, the constant sense of the victory of grace over all natural di-
visions, is the most inspiring theme in documents of the early Church. The Church was really
one in history, in the facts of its life; unity was for it not a mere unattainable idea. The whole ex-
tent of the sin and tragedy of divisions within it can only be measured by the standard of this uni-
ty.
We have seen also that the basic structure of the Church was that of a universal union of
local churches bound by the unity of apostolic succession; each Church community was both an
image of the unity of Christ and the Church, and organically a part of the universal unity of all
Christians as one people of God. While the structure of the local Church and its bond with other
churches derived directly from the very essence of Christianity, the outward forms of this bond
between churches changed and developed, depending on historical conditions. For example, in
the apostolic era the unquestioned center of unity of all the churches was the Jerusalem commu-
nity, the Mother Church in the full and absolute meaning of this word — the source and model
for all other communities. With the end of Palestinian Judeo-Christianity, we already see within
the Church several such centers, each consecrated by apostolic authority but also a center be-
cause of the number of Christians and the importance of the city. At first such centers — Antioch
and Ephesus in the East and Rome in the West — had no jurisdictional or canonical rights con-
nected with them; but as the source of preaching and dissemination of Christianity to the areas
around them, they naturally enjoyed particular respect and authority. For example, at the end of
the first century the Roman Church sent an epistle to the Church in Corinth, where disputes had
arisen; while Bishop Ignatius of Antioch on his way to martyrdom exhorted the churches of Asia
Minor in the faith. There is no mention of “rights” or “subordination,” but the more ancient
churches were naturally more concerned for the universal unity of Christians and the welfare of
the Church. Among them the Church of Rome, the Church of the apostles Peter and Paul — the
Church of the capital of the empire — undoubtedly enjoyed special recognition from the very
first.
There was also some friction, even at a very early stage, as we have seen; the Roman bi-
shops were inclined at times to confuse their authority with certain formal rights, and more and
more to interpret the tradition of “presiding in love” in juridical terms. Yet each time such claims

122
ran into the concerted rebuff of the whole Church — both in the West and in the East. Toward
the beginning of the fourth century, however, Rome‟s first place was not denied by anyone in the
Church. On the other hand, the universal structure of the Church had been defined in its basic
features: it would find its final expression, as we know, in the patriarchates or extensive regional
unions of churches around one great center.

Elements of Misunderstanding with Rome.
Such was the situation at the beginning of the age of Constantine. But from that time, the
fundamental misunderstanding between the Eastern and Western halves of the Church became
deeper, ending in final separation. On the one hand, in Rome it was increasingly apparent that a
firm conception of the papacy had developed according to which special God-given rights had
been granted to the bishop of Rome over the universal Church. This point of view became in-
creasingly strong after the fall of the Western empire, when the Roman Church became the only
light in the approaching chaos. In the works of Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century, this
theory was expressed with great clarity. It is equally clear that it sharply contradicted the idea of
the structure of the Church which the whole East had always held. In other words, in the fifth and
sixth centuries we see within the Church two ecclesiologies — two doctrines of the Church —
which were not only distinct but in fact mutually exclusive.
At this point we must also emphasize the East‟s essential fault in the division of the
churches: namely, an almost complete insensitivity in the thinking of the Eastern Church to the
underlying ecclesiological conflict, the lack of any consistent reaction to the growth of the papa-
cy. The theory of the “power” (potestas) of the Roman primate was openly proclaimed in Rome
in the era of the ecumenical councils, and the Protestant canonist Theodor Zahn has formulated it
as follows: “Rome is the head of the Church, without it the Church is not the Church, and only
through union with Rome do the separate communities become part of the Catholic Church.” But
the East did not perceive, or did not want to perceive, how this theory clearly contradicted its
own doctrine. Rome always clearly followed its own policy, but the East, without ever really ac-
cepting it, until the ninth century never once expressed its nonacceptance or rejection of it in any
clear way. They always tried to conceal disagreement in diffuse and ambiguous phrases. When
Catholic scholars now assert, on the basis of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, that the
East recognized the primacy of Rome at that time but later rejected it, it is rather difficult to an-
swer the charge on the basis of formal historical evidence, since one may in fact conclude from
the history of those two councils that the Greek bishops admitted the special prerogatives of the
Roman bishop.
By interpreting these events in the context of the whole Eastern way of thought, compar-
ing them with other facts and viewing the Eastern Church as a whole, we know this is not so, but
the East made no formal answer either to Celestine at Ephesus or to Leo at Chalcedon. When
Pope Celestine‟s legate at Ephesus declared that “Peter, to whom our Lord Jesus Christ has given
the keys of the Kingdom and the power to bind and loose sins, now and forevermore remains and
judges in the person of his successors” the Greek bishops remained silent. The protest of Pope
Leo the Great against the twenty-eighth canon at Chalcedon (which made the see of Constanti-
nople a “new Rome”) was answered by Patriarch Anatolius with a cowardly renunciation of re-
sponsibility for the canon, assuring the pope that without the latter‟s approval not one of the de-
crees of the ecumenical council could be in effect. Even more characteristic of this eternal com-
promise with Rome was the signing of the formula of Pope Hormisdas by the Eastern bishops in
519, ending the thirty-year schism between Rome and Constantinople. The whole essence of the

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papal claims cannot be more clearly expressed than in this document, which was imposed upon
the Eastern bishops.
According to Duchesne‟s calculation, in the period from Constantine to the Seventh
Ecumenical Council, the Eastern Church was in schism with Rome for two hundred and three
years in all;
31
but dogmatic problems and heresies — never the rejection of the papacy — were
always the cause of the break. “The Easterners not only did not object in time to the growing
mystique of papal dogmas,” wrote a Russian historian, “they not only silently signed the papal
formulations, but they themselves, by their appeals to Rome, heedless of the juridical implica-
tions, supported the sincere illusions of the Romans that the Greeks, too, shared the Western
concept of the papacy.”

Deepening Divergence.
How can one explain this strange development? Catholic scholars usually allude to the
lack in Byzantium of any dear doctrine of the Church, or to the “opportunism” of the Greek hie-
rarchy, which recognized or repudiated the Roman primacy as necessity ordained. This is hardly
an adequate account of the situation. The juridical and canonical aspects of the Church were less
developed in the East than in the West, but the primary reason for this was that the Church and
all it contained was felt to be based on a sacramental reality, the mystical essence of the Church
as the Body of Christ. Another reason for the East‟s insensitivity to the papacy lay in its alliance
with the empire, which has already been discussed at length. We have seen that one result of the
conversion of Constantine was that the Church itself adopted his theocratic dream — that the
empire became in a way an essential category in its earthly existence. For a very long time it
seemed that the only earthly point where Christianity could adapt to the world and to history was
in the idea of a single Christian empire, the universe founded by Constantine, who for the Church
was a consecrated man, equal to the apostles. This “Roman idea” was held by the whole Church,
in both East and West; but in the West the fall of the imperial state altered its form and was one
of the reasons for the growth of the papacy. The great conflict between the popes and the Ger-
man emperors was essentially a consequence of the split in this common Roman tradition, a
struggle between two identical theocratic conceptions of world order.
In the East this idea gradually led to the development of a definite ideology of Church
and state, an organic alliance. The danger of such an ideology was that it erased the boundary
between ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church‟s eternal essence) and the temporal adaptation
of the Church to particular historical conditions, so that the empire became the earthly support of
the Church. The doctrine of the Church merged, as it were, with the doctrine of its union with the
empire — the ideology of Church and state. The question of Roman claims simply did not touch
this ideology, which remained concealed from the consciousness of the Byzantine Church. The
Eastern Church solved all its problems of administration and canonical structure — successfully
or unsuccessfully — by co-ordination with the structure of the state. Therefore the East did not
react ecclesiastically to the Roman question, since the question seemed administrative rather than
ecclesiological. With the division of East from West and the breakdown of constant communica-
tion, the Easterners simply could not comprehend the dogmatic significance the popes attached
to their jurisdictional claims, and carelessly assumed it was simply a matter of administrative
precedence and love of power. Such an administrative matter, the East assumed, concerned the
sphere of Church and state rather than the Church alone. This governmental barrier prevented the

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Byzantine Church from understanding the real theological or ecclesiological significance of the
problem of the papacy. For the same reasons for which the Church of Constantinople was “con-
demned” to promotion, all papal protests against the promotion were also condemned to failure.
On the other hand, the East, continually shaken by dogmatic disputes, concentrated all its
efforts on solving them, and was frequently obliged to seek help in the West, which was less
“theological” but also less susceptible to diseases of heresy. Eastern bishops called the pope their
father and teacher, instinctively aware that this would change nothing in the imperial organiza-
tion of the Eastern Church. Frequently the emperors themselves, concerned to get a quick solu-
tion to dogmatic disputes that were leading to political rebellion, urged the Eastern bishops to an
inconsistent “Romophilia.” This occurred in the elimination of the so-called Acacian schism in
515, and later, in the consecration of Patriarch Menas by Pope Agapetus at the start of Justinian‟s
reign.
It is completely incorrect to imagine problems of Church structure as alien to an Ortho-
dox East forever soaring in the heights of metaphysics. One need only point to the canonical tra-
dition of Byzantium, adorned by the names of Balsamon, Zonaras, Chomatenus, and many oth-
ers. But the canonical way of thinking in the East was unlike that of the West. From the time
when the imperial authority became Christian, it was held that all questions concerning outward
organization of the Church should be solved in conjunction with that authority, and that therefore
ecclesiastical canons should be sanctioned by the emperor and become the law of the land as
well. The East‟s insensitivity to the depth of its divergence from Rome in its understanding and
experience of the Church resulted primarily from the merging of Church and state in the eccle-
siastical cast of mind in Byzantium.
Sooner or later, of course, this divergence was bound to be clearly exposed. But it hap-
pened that communication between the churches, which alone could have restored the policy of
healing each other‟s illnesses, broke down increasingly with the succeeding centuries. The Ro-
man oekumene was falling apart into separate worlds, the link between them was being lost, and
each was beginning to live its own closed and separate life. The bond between the two halves of
the empire — which had been strained by Diocletian‟s diarchy, the transfer of the capital to the
Bosphorus, and the division of Theodosius — was further loosened by the barbarian invasions.
The basic aim of Byzantine politics was now becoming defense from the Asiatic East, which
constantly threatened it. The West ceased to be necessary to Byzantium, and the Eastern orienta-
tion of Byzantine politics, conclusively adopted by the emperors after the failure of Justinian‟s
dream, assured the empire of several more centuries of political stability and even power. This
“Eastern” period lasted as long as Byzantium alone was capable of withstanding the pressure of
Asia. It included the Isaurian and Macedonian dynasties. The last upswing in this Eastern au-
tarchy of the empire must be considered to have taken place under Basil Bulgaroctonus, in whose
reign (976-1025) the empire stretched from Istria to the Euphrates and from the Drava to Cyprus.
Even at that time, it “was not closed off as much in any direction as in the West . . . The face of
Byzantium was turned toward the East.”
32

Loss of Communication.
It must be admitted that the Church submitted to this pressure of history and made no ef-
fort to overcome it. After the break in political and economic communications came the severing

125
of ecclesiastical relations. Officially the Church was one; true unity, however, is not nourished
by “official” ties but by living communion, particularly by a constant effort to overcome natural
division by the unity of grace. This universal cast of thought, which had so inspired Irenaeus of
Lyons and Cyprian of Carthage, grew weaker, ecclesiastically as well as politically, and East and
West became locked each within its own horizon. During the iconoclastic controversy, through
the fault of the Byzantine emperors, the last bonds connecting the empire with the papacy gave
way.
True, the conservative and equally “imperially oriented” thinking of the popes passed
through many doubts and torments before they determined on a schism. Only the desperate situa-
tion of Italy and Rome and the impossibility of procuring help from Byzantium threw them into
the embrace of the Frankish kings, and this was the point of departure for a new period in the his-
tory of the Western world. Yet at this period of maximum alienation between East and West
comes the final crystallization of Byzantine Orthodoxy. Here were two worlds, two traditions,
two ecclesiastical psychologies, which knew little of each other; and though the unity of the
Church was not as yet formally destroyed, in living terms it no longer existed.
The question of Roman claims, which had never been answered or even really posed in
the East in the previous period, because of broken relations with the West, now disappeared, no
longer demanding a solution. The popes had no time for the East in the troubled and stormy era
of the Dark Ages, and Byzantium, plunged in its own difficulties stopped thinking about the
West. The Eastern Church, which had previously at least consulted with Rome, now became ac-
customed to getting along entirely without it and was finally enclosed within its own imperial-
ism. Everything outside the borders of the empire was defined as “barbarian,” and relations with
these barbarians were extremely vague. The new position of the bishop of Rome was similarly
obscure for the consciousness of the Byzantine Church. They tried to clear up the obscurity by a
theory which called for five patriarchs — related to the idea of the “five senses,” but did not give
much thought to whether the pope would recognize these theories.
The result of this long alienation was that when the two worlds met again, they seemed
really alien to each other: unneeded, incomprehensible, and — finally — hostile. There are few
sadder pages in the history of the Church than those that record the lack of love, the suspicion,
the pettiness, and the stifling narrowness that both sides revealed.
We see the first attempt at such an encounter at the end of the ninth century in the noto-
rious affair of the patriarchs Photius and Ignatius, which left extremely sad memories in the East.
It would be difficult to imagine more misunderstanding, intolerance, and haughtiness than were
shown by Pope Nicholas and his successors in their intervention in the internal difficulties of the
Byzantine Church. This has recently been acknowledged in Roman Catholic scholarship by Fa-
ther Dvornik, who has devoted a remarkable volume to the rehabilitation of Photius, previously
considered by Catholics the father of the schism.
33
Photius was the first to point out clearly the
innovations in the doctrine of the Western Church that constituted the real essence of the schism:
the exaggerated role of the pope and the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. It is true
that, once he had posed these questions, showing a real understanding of the situation and de-
monstrating theologically the unorthodoxy of the dogma of Filioque, Photius himself removed
the questions from the agenda by simply being silent about them. Still, he furnished us with the
beginning of a genuine ecclesiological and Orthodox reaction to the Western errors.

33
Dvornik, op. cit.

126
After Photius there was again a period of alienation; the next real encounter with the
West did not occur until the middle of the eleventh century, and was obviously conditioned by
reasons of state. The period after the death of Basil Bulgaroctonus (1025) was marked by the be-
ginning of a sharp decline for the empire. At the time of this internal crisis, all the threatening
concern was suddenly shifted to a new enemy in the East, the Seljuk Turks — news of whom, as
Gelzer has remarked, rang like a death knell for Byzantium. Weakened from within, the empire
by itself was no longer in a condition to withstand the Eastern wave, and the balance of forces,
which had previously been achieved began to break down. The historical situation again im-
pelled Byzantine policy to seek help in the West. At the same time the appearance of the Nor-
mans forced the Roman pope to turn toward Byzantium. Then began that prolonged and utterly
joyless history of negotiations and trading that lasted until the last day of the empire.

Schism of 1054.
It is clear from the foregoing that the event usually designated as marking the beginning
of this major division of the Church — the schism of 1054 — must be interpreted in the context
of the whole political situation. The encounter between East and West was born of necessity.
Emperor Constantine Monomachus was negotiating with the pope on the mutual defense of Italy
(the southern part of which belonged to Byzantium) against the Normans, and on this account
promised Pope Leo IX to give back the south Italian dioceses then under the jurisdiction of the
patriarch of Constantinople, for they were a part of the empire. This pact was concealed from the
patriarch, Michael Cerularius; who, however, found out about it. Cerularius himself, an outstand-
ing figure in the long line of Byzantine patriarchs, had become a monk against his will after par-
ticipating in a political plot that failed. He was wholeheartedly devoted to the service of the
Church, but brought a politically-minded, power-conscious temperament to the task. For a brief
instant the delicate balance between Church and empire tipped in favor of the Church; Cerula-
rius‟ career shows what the possibilities might have been for the Church if another psychology
had been dominant within it. He decided to prove to the weak and indecisive emperor the inde-
pendence and strength of his position.
Paradoxical as it may sound, the churches did not separate in the eleventh century over
what really divided them then and continues to divide them today. At the time of the final schism
the subjects of dispute were not the questions of the papacy and the Holy Spirit, but ritual diver-
gences between East and West as to the use of unleavened bread, fasting on Saturday, the singing
of Alleluia at Easter, and so on. This reflected a narrowing of the universal horizon of the
Church; what was secondary, external, and ceremonial was overshadowing the importance of the
truth. Almost all the Byzantine arguments against the Latin rites have long since become unim-
portant, and only the genuinely dogmatic deviations of Rome have remained. Yet nothing was
said of them in the years when the final bonds were broken.
At the patriarch‟s instruction one of the leading Byzantine hierarchs, Leo of Ohrid, wrote
a tract against the Latin rites. Of course, behind the argument over ritual, Cerularius was conceal-
ing his defense of the Eastern Church from the capitulation to Rome imposed upon it by the em-
peror. It was so understood in Rome. Leo IX responded with an extreme assertion of papal au-
thority: “No one can deny that, just as the whole door is directed by its handle, so the order and
structure of the whole Church is defined by Peter and his successors. And just as the handle
pushes and pulls the door while itself remaining stationary, so Peter and his successors have the
right to pronounce judgment on any local Church. No one should resist them in any way or try to
usurp their place, for the supreme seat is not to be judged by anyone.” In proof of his special au-

127
thority the pope referred to the Donation of Constantine, a document according to which the first
Christian emperor had allegedly granted Rome to the popes. Today everyone recognizes its spu-
rious character. The pope concluded by stating that the Church of Constantinople was in error,
sinful, scandalous (even ruled by women!), and that Rome granted second place after itself to it
only out of indulgence, not because it was deserved.
Such an outlook naturally precluded any hope of unity between the churches. The Greeks
may legitimately be accused of pettiness, lack of love, or loss of a universal cast of mind, but
these things would not have been enough to divide the Church. Papal pretensions, however, ex-
cluded all who did not agree to its spiritual monarchy. Whatever the errors of the Eastern hie-
rarchs of the period, it was the papacy itself that was the real reason for the separation; whatever
the Greeks may have done, it was the popes who acted to cut off the East.
Subsequent correspondence could not change anything in the developing events. In the
summer of 1054 papal legates arrived in Constantinople — Cardinal Humbert, Bishop Peter of
Amalfi, and Cardinal Deacon Frederick of Lotharingia, the future Pope Stephen IX. They were
all leaders of papal reform, who later prepared the way for its flourishing under Gregory VII
(Hildebrand). The emperor was still relying on his political agreement with the pope, and re-
ceived the legates with due ceremony and rendered them every protection. In order to placate
them, Nicetas of Stethatos, disciple and biographer of St. Simeon the New Theologian, who had
also criticized Rome, was obliged by imperial order to condemn public and burn his writings
against the Latin innovations. The patriarch received the papal epistle from the legates in silence,
showed them no respect, and afterward refused to meet with them. For five weeks the legates
sought an audience in vain. The rupture had grown ripe. In vain the scholarly patriarch of Anti-
och, Peter, one of the clergy of Constantinople, urged Michael and the Western hierarchs to place
the unity of the Church above ceremonial rites. His appeal came too late; he did not perceive that
the papacy had actually already divided the Church. Losing patience, the legates resolved on a
demonstration against the patriarch. On the morning of July 16, 1054, when the people were as-
sembled in St. Sophia for the liturgy, they entered the sanctuary and placed on the altar the bull
of excommunication against Cerularius and his supporters. “Wherefore we, not tolerating the un-
precedented neglect and insult against the first holy and apostolic throne and making every effort
to support the Catholic faith, by the power of the holy and indivisible Trinity and of the apostolic
seat whose mission we represent, sign the anathema against Michael and his followers if they do
not repent.”
The legates overestimated the strength of the emperor, and thought by this act to gain de-
cisive support against Cerularius. They did not know the might of the patriarch; a popular rebel-
lion began to develop in the capital and the emperor was forced to think of his own safety. He
capitulated. It was officially declared that the Greek translators had distorted the sense of the Lat-
in bull, and it was ceremoniously burned. On July 20 a council headed by Cerularius and com-
posed of two archbishops, twelve metropolitans, and seven bishops solemnly excommunicated in
turn those who had been responsible for the action of July 16. The patriarch‟s epistle brought this
to the attention of the whole Eastern hierarchy. So ended one of the major dramas in the history
of the Eastern Church.

Alienation Completed.
The schism of 1054 was only the beginning of the separation of the churches. At first it
was experienced more as one of those temporary schisms between the two major sees of which
there had been many in the past. Ecclesiastical bonds were not broken everywhere at once. The

128
schism developed into final separation and into racial and religious hatred only in the following
era, and here a fatal role was played by the Crusades, which revealed Byzantium‟s “Western
problem” in all its complexity.
The emperors of the eleventh century, turning toward the West in response to increasing
pressure from Asia, still did not perceive where this must inevitably lead. By calling the West to
its aid, Byzantium revealed its weakness and involved the West in all its difficulties. It did not
realize that the West to which it had appealed had long since emerged from anarchy and parti-
tion. Byzantium had overlooked the birth of a new world, strong in its youthfulness and still un-
used energy; the Crusades were an outlet for that energy and the first expansion of medieval Eu-
rope. So the West, which Byzantium had been regarding as a temporary support against the
Asian East, immediately acquired a threatening, independent significance.
It is only too well known how the Fourth Crusade ended, in 1204, with the capture of
Constantinople, the barbarous sacking of the city, the profaning of Orthodox sacred objects, and
the sixty-year Latin empire in the East. But this was only the high point, the most vivid of the
manifestations of hatred crowded into this prolonged encounter between the divided halves of
the Christian world. The separation of the churches ceased to be a dispute between hierarchs or a
theological controversy; for centuries it was part of the flesh and blood of the people of the
Church, a constant source of anguish in their state of mind. “Latinism” in the East and “the
Greeks” in the West were synonymous with evil, heresy, and hostility, and became terms of pro-
fanity. Now not the hierarchs but the masses of the people confronted each other, and in their
thinking separation changed into an elemental hatred, in which loyalty to their faith and a sense
of injury because of the desecration of their holy places were mingled with a basic rejection of
everything strange, without distinguishing what was good in it from what was bad.
The worst part of the separation of the churches lies in the fact that through the centuries
we find hardly any sign of suffering from it, any longing for reunification, any awareness of the
abnormality, sin, and horror of this schism in Christendom. There was almost a satisfaction with
the separation, and a desire to discover darker and darker aspects in the opposite camp. It was a
separation not only in the sense that these two churches were in fact divided, but also in the sense
of a continually deepening and widening gulf in the state of mind of the total Christian communi-
ty.
This psychology gave an intolerable superficiality to the attempts at union that stretch
like a crimson thread from the period of the First Crusade at the end of the eleventh century to
the fall of the empire in the fifteenth. The reasons for their persistent renewal are only too clear.
In the West they represented the theocratic drive of the papacy, which reached its maximum
power under Gregory VII, to bring all Christendom into complete subjection. It was, in a way, a
thirst for the unification of the Church, but very remote from that unity which had inspired the
early Church, which was conceived primarily as a unity of faith, love, and life. Now, for the
West, the whole problem of unity was reduced to a single point: submission to Rome and exter-
nal recognition of its absolute primacy. Rome responded to every appeal from Byzantium for aid
with the demand that they recognize the power of the pope, and then the whole Western world
would become their ally. Because Rome had become the undisputed spiritual center of the West,
each time Byzantium lay gasping from the embraces of Islam, which hugged her more and more
closely, she had no one to turn to except Rome. The shameful chain of unending negotiations,
disputes, promises, and falsehood, went on and on, containing everything but the most important
factor: the real wish for unity, the longing for a genuine fulfillment of the Church of Christ.

129
It is impossible to enumerate all these attempts. In Byzantium they were almost entirely
due to political problems. The Church actually rejected them all, despite the pressure of the em-
peror; more than anything else, this theme of union demonstrated that the emperor in Byzantium
was not all-powerful. Michael VIII Paleologus, who through his intermediaries had signed the
union of Lyons in 1274 despite the opposition of the Church, died excommunicate and was de-
prived of Church burial. In Byzantium itself, starting with the thirteenth century, a group of “La-
tinizers” sprang up, partisans of unity and supporters of Western ecclesiastical doctrine — a cer-
tain sympathy for Rome can be found even in the highest circles. But like the attraction of some
Russian aristocrats of the nineteenth century to Catholicism, this was not a movement within the
Orthodox Church, but simply the conversion of certain Orthodox to Catholicism, and rejection of
union in the mind of the Orthodox Church itself remained unchanged.
The series of attempts culminated in a spiritual catastrophe for the Byzantine Church, the
Council of Florence in 1438-39, which ended with the Greek hierarchs subscribing one and all to
a complete capitulation to Rome. To understand the event, we must read the proceedings of this
unlucky council, and feel some empathy for the torment of the Creeks, who were fearful of the
destruction of the empire by Islam and persecuted by financial pressure from the Latins — since
they even lacked funds to return home. They were under great psychological pressure from the
emperor and subjected to the intrigues of the Latinizers, who were determined to achieve union
at any cost. All this must be recognized in order to comprehend in human terms, if not justify,
their cowardly error. The celebration by Catholics in 1939 of the jubilee of the union in Florence
is evidence of profound misunderstanding of the real ecclesiastical conception of the Orthodox
Church. Pope Eugene IV showed greater penetration at the time when he asked, on being joyful-
ly informed by his bishops that all the Greeks had signed the union, “Did Mark of Ephesus sign,
too?” Receiving an answer in the negative, he is traditionally supposed to have said, “Well, that
means we have achieved nothing.” In fact, all signed except one, but that one, St. Mark of Ephe-
sus, became the expression of faith, experience, and tradition for the Eastern Church. When the
Greeks returned to Byzantium, they immediately repudiated with horror the union that had been
forced upon them, and the fall of the empire fourteen years later tragically eliminated the very
reason the council had been held. The empire, for whose sake some had been ready to sacrifice
Orthodoxy, ceased to exist.
Such attempts at union were, in fact, especially responsible for reinforcing separation; the
question of the unity of the churches was long confused by falsehood and calculation and poi-
soned by nonecclesiastical and debased motives. The Church recognizes only unity and therefore
cannot recognize any “union.” The latter implies a lack of confidence in unity, a denial of the
unifying fire of grace, which can make all that is “natural” — all historical insults, limitations,
gulfs, and misunderstandings — nonexistent, and can overcome them by force of the divine
power. The Byzantine period in the history of Orthodoxy began with the alienation between East
and West. It ended with complete separation; from then on the Orthodox East was divided from
the Roman West by an impenetrable wall. Orthodoxy became “Eastern” once and for all.

Cyril and Methodius.
At the time the empire fell, a new factor had long since entered into Eastern Orthodoxy,
had grown strong within it, and had acquired an independent significance. This was the Slavic
element. The swift growth of Slavic Christianity out of Byzantine roots begins a new and ex-
tremely important chapter in the history of the Orthodox Church. The Slavs appear early in the
life of Byzantium, illumined by the glow of conflagrations and caught up in the ravages of war.

130
Until the end of the sixth century the empire was successful in throwing them back beyond the
Danube, but in 580 almost a hundred thousand of them overflowed into Greece. In the seventh
century, liberated from the Avar empire of which they had hitherto been a part, the Slavs gradu-
ally settled the ancient Roman provinces they had devastated: Illyria, Moesia, Thrace, and Mace-
donia. The whole century was spent in combating these still savage hordes. Gradually, however,
the Slavs entered the Byzantine orbit inwardly as well as by external penetration, and the sons of
their princes, like the Germans before them, gladly accepted minor court titles from Constanti-
nople. The first Christianization of the Slavs began.
At the end of the seventh century came a new invasion from a Turkic people, the Bulgars,
who asserted their authority in provinces settled by Slavs and began a struggle against the empire
that lasted many years. As occurred later with the Varangian conquerors of the eastern Slavs,
they themselves became Slavicized. Almost at the very gates of the capital, a mighty Bulgar-
Slavic state was gradually formed by a nearly uninterrupted war that lasted throughout the whole
eighth — or “iconoclastic” — century. We do not know how this new and threatening Slavic
problem would have been solved for Byzantium if a development had not taken place in the
second half of the ninth century that marks the real beginning of the Slavic chapter in the history
of Orthodoxy: the “translation” of Christianity into Slavic by two brothers who became Byzan-
tine saints: Constantine (who later received the monastic name of Cyril) and Methodius.
There is an immense literature on the first teachers of the Slavs. Historical research on
their activity is complicated by confessional hostility. Which holds the honor of first encouraging
Slavic Christianity — Constantinople or Rome? There are disputes on these matters, but the an-
swers are unimportant by comparison with the immense significance of the heritage of Cyril and
Methodius in the destiny of the Eastern Church.
They belonged to the intellectual elite of Byzantium, which was grouped around Pa-
triarch Photius in Constantinople in the second half of the ninth century. Constantine was a phi-
losopher, scholar, and linguist, and important missions to the Arabs and Khazars, who lived in
southern Russia on the near side of the Dnieper, had been entrusted to him. Natives of Thessalo-
nica, a city with a large Slavic population, the brothers had in all probability known the local
Slavic dialect from childhood. In 862 the Slavic Prince Rostislav of Moravia sent a request to
Constantinople for missionaries who could help him strengthen Christianity among the Slavs. (It
must be stated that the motives impelling him were not solely religious, but also political. By
strengthening Christianity among the Slavs he was fortifying his own national independence
against the new historical colossus of Germanism, which was forming at the time). The choice,
probably made with the help of Patriarch Photius, naturally fell on the two brothers, and in the
middle of 864 they arrived in Velehrad, the capital of Moravia.
Here, along with their purely missionary activity, they began their great work of translat-
ing Christian writings into Slavic. From a legalistic point of view, they were working in a region
that had been part of the sphere of influence of the Roman Church from ancient times. These
were years of intense struggle between Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photius. To regularize their
situation, or perhaps because of a summons from Rome, which had become disturbed at the
growth of Greek influence among the western Slavs, the brothers quickly went to the Western
capital, where Nicholas‟ successor Hadrian greeted them ceremoniously and affectionately. The
Slavic Gospel was placed on the altar of St. Mary as a sign of papal blessing, and the Slavic li-
turgy was performed in many Roman Churches.
The mission to the Slavs, beginning under the dual blessing of Byzantium and Rome,
promised quick success, but the story of Constantine records the beginning of opposition as well,

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against which the brothers were obliged to defend their work. He was not destined to return to
Moravia but died in Rome in 869, becoming a monk just before his death and obtaining his
brother‟s promise to continue the work he had begun.
Methodius was also unable to return to the scene of his first labors. While the brothers
were in Rome, German pressure on Moravia had increased, and after 870 it became part of the
Western empire. Methodius stayed farther south with the Pannonian Prince Kotzel, who shared
Rostislav‟s views on strengthening Christianity among the Slavs as a defense against German-
ism. Here, in all probability, he introduced the Slavic liturgy for the first time, and this caused
many of his troubles. In 794 one of the Western councils had forbidden the celebration of the li-
turgy in any language but Latin, Greek, or Hebrew; technically, Methodius had broken this law.
Besides, although Latinism was weak in Moravia, Pannonia had been under the administration of
the Latin archbishopric of Salzburg for seventy-five years, and conflict was inevitable. The mis-
sionary to the Slavs was obviously “out of bounds.”
Both Kotzel and the archbishop of Salzburg appealed to Rome, which again supported
Methodius. He was made head of a separate diocese of Pannonia, subordinate to Rome. But his
enemies were not pacified. Methodius was accused of flouting the Church canons, condemned
by the Sejm in Regensburg (an assembly of secular and ecclesiastical notables), and forced to
languish in prison for two and a half years. All his complaints to Rome were intercepted. Under
Pope John VIII he again received firm support for a while. Understanding the full significance of
the Slavs, the pope appointed him archbishop of Moravia and stood by him, despite never-ending
intrigues. So in ceaseless struggle, defending his own rights, betrayed by his enemies but sup-
ported by the people, Methodius lived on until 885.
During this time immense work was accomplished, which was to fertilize the whole Slav-
ic world. But the immediate work of the brothers fell to pieces among the western Slavs after
Methodius‟ death. They could not hold off German pressures, and Pope Stephen, who could not
understand the policy of his predecessors, simply liquidated the whole Slavic mission. The dis-
ciples of Methodius were driven out of Moravia, and only in the nineteenth century, during a
time of Slavic renewal, did the work of Cyril and Methodius again become a rallying point for
national liberation and western Slavic culture.

Rise of the Bulgarian Empire.
In Bulgaria, however, there were more immediate fruits of their mission. This was the
first great Slavic state, the first conscious effort to build an empire and to repeat the Byzantine
experience among the Slavs. This Bulgarian prologue was destined to define the whole future
course of Slavic Orthodoxy in one way or another. Until the middle of the ninth century, terri-
torial consolidation proceeded and the Slavic tribes were united under the Bulgar khans. When
Boris began his reign in 852, this territorial amalgamation was complete and the problem of
baptism had arisen in turn.
It must be emphasized that from the very start the acceptance of Christianity had a politi-
cal significance in the history of the Slavs, as well as a religious one; this may be explained by
their relations to Byzantium. Although weakened and without its former halo of invincibility, the
empire remained the golden dream of all barbarians throughout these centuries — a center of
culture and political tradition, the true center of the world. Constantinople was a fabulous capital,
full of treasures and riches, the symbol of strength, beauty, and glory. In the thought of the “bar-
barian” nations we can trace the paradoxical dualism of their relations with Byzantium. On the
one hand, they had a military dream of conquest — to live off the riches of the empire, tear off

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bits of territory, and finally conquer it — this was the constant goal of the Slavic “empires.” On
the other hand they had a profound, almost religious respect for it, wanted to imitate it in every
way and participate in its glorious and ancient tradition.
This tradition, however, was inseparable from Christianity. Only the acceptance of Chris-
tianity could bring culture within the reach of the barbarians and include them among the great
families of the human race. Therefore baptism became an inevitable stage in the political devel-
opment of the Slavs, a sign of their historical maturity.
Christianity had of course existed in Bulgaria even before Boris; it was imperial territory,
Christianized in ancient times. But he was the first to make of it an instrument of political growth
and crystallization for his empire; in brief, he transplanted into the minds of the Slavs the Chris-
tian theocracy by which Byzantium had lived since the conversion of Constantine.
His political calculations are also apparent in the fact that he wavered for a long time be-
tween Byzantium and Rome as the proper auspices for baptism. He was obliged to take into ac-
count those around him, his bodyguard, who were closely tied to the national pagan tradition.
These nobles must regard Christianity, not as the faith of their enemies the Byzantines, but as the
basis for Bulgaria‟s national and political independence from Byzantium. Yet according to By-
zantine theocratic ideology, which linked Church and state in indissoluble union, baptism meant
entry into the state as well — entry into the Byzantine world. In other words, it threatened to ab-
sorb the young Bulgar state. The basic ecclesiastical policy of Boris and his successors, there-
fore, became that of obtaining at any cost their own independent, “autocephalous” Church, which
could become the same religious sanction for Bulgaria that the Church of Constantinople had
been for the empire. This was an extremely important moment in the history of Orthodoxy and
must be particularly stressed. Christianity came to the Slavs in its Byzantine, theocratic aspect,
and immediately became the source of the same inspiration as in Byzantium. In this case, how-
ever, such a vision inevitably came into conflict with its Byzantine prototype, and introduced in-
to the Orthodox world the poison of inevitable divisions and combat.
Boris continued to waver, apparently inclining to a Western solution, which was a matter
of life and death for Byzantium to prevent. A military campaign in which the Greeks were victo-
rious obliged him to capitulate: baptism was made a condition for peace. The Bulgar khan was
immediately baptized, almost on the battlefield (869), and his godfather was the Emperor Mi-
chael III himself. But what Boris had feared indeed came to pass: the bodyguard began to rebel.
The newly-baptized prince inundated them in blood, but understood the omens and immediately
took measures to procure ecclesiastical independence from Byzantium. For him this marked the
first step toward empire, the dream of all barbarians who in warfare against Rome had absorbed
forever the Roman-Christian idea.
Byzantium had no notion of granting this autonomy, however. The political basis for the
baptism of the Bulgars was the precise opposite of Boris‟ plan; Byzantium was striving to hold
subject as far as possible a strong and dangerous Bulgaria, and to include it within the sphere of
its theocracy. Once more we see all the magic that the concept of theocracy held for the Byzan-
tine mind and its incapacity to judge events from a purely Christian or purely ecclesiastical
viewpoint. According to this theory even baptism became not only admission into Christ‟s flock
and the beginning of the reign of grace, but to a great extent it also meant acceptance of Byzan-
tine citizenship. Itself poisoned, Byzantium, to its great shame, also poisoned those who received
the Christian Gospel from it.
Now Boris began his manipulations. Not securing independence from Byzantium for his
Church, he appealed to Rome. The dramatic conflict between Bulgaria and Byzantium was com-

133
plicated by the separation of the churches, then in process. Nicholas I, enemy of Photius and one
of the founders of the medieval papacy, seized joyfully on this opportunity to establish his power
in the East. He sent two bishops with books, presents, and letters to Bulgaria; whereas the By-
zantines had limited their delegation to archimandrites, a lower rank. Boris, delighted, drove all
the Greek clergy out of Bulgaria, and a vigorous Latinization began. In his letters the pope tried
in every way to discredit the Greek faith.
This did not last long, however. Boris wanted a patriarch and religious autonomy. The
papacy was even less favorably inclined to this than Byzantium had been, for in the West the last
trace of the independence of the ancient churches had now been eliminated. Boris broke with
Rome as firmly as he had broken with Byzantium and once more appealed to Constantinople.
Wiser for their experience, the Byzantines were forced now to agree to a semi-autonomous Bul-
garian archbishopric. The later unfortunate history of relations between Bulgaria and Byzantium
shows plainly that they made this concession out of necessity, not because they had rejected one
iota of the idea of Byzantium‟s ecclesiastical monopoly. But Boris was for the moment placated
since he could turn to strengthening his own empire, now Christian.

Bulgarian Orthodoxy.
All this political coloring must not conceal from us the positive significance of Boris‟
work. Acceptance of the heritage of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria had immense subsequent
meaning. The disciples of Methodius who had been driven out of Moravia came to Bulgaria and
were received with honor. The wise khan inevitably perceived the value of the Slavonic Church
service for his dream of a Slavic empire shored up by an independent Church. To avoid opposi-
tion from the Greek hierarchy, he sent Clement, leader of Methodius‟ disciples, to the region of
Ochrida in the west of the kingdom, where the work of Cyril and Methodius had found it first
fertile soil, and the bright image of St. Clement of Ochrida illumines the beginning of Slavic
Christianity. Not limiting himself solely to religious enlightenment, he tried in every way to im-
prove the economic conditions of his backward flock. Numerous members of the Slavic priest-
hood were trained, Christian Orthodox writings in Slavonic were accumulated, and the begin-
nings of an Orthodox Slavic culture laid down.
The personality of Boris himself was not limited to political calculations and dreams. As
time passed, his political interests were increasingly replaced by purely religious ones. Christian-
ity really developed within his soul; while he did not put aside his work or change his theories,
“the one thing necessary” held increasing sway in the depths of his mind. A Western chronicler
states that by day he appeared before the people in imperial robes, but passed the night in prayer.
After ruling for thirty- six years, he abdicated the throne in 888 in favor of his son and withdrew
to a monastery. State disorders summoned him back to power once more, but when order was
restored and he had passed the empire on to his grandson Simeon, he withdrew permanently into
a life of prayer.
Under Simeon (892-927) Bulgaria achieved its apogee. He had himself been educated in
Byzantium, where he had studied “the rhetoric of Demosthenes and the syllogisms of Aristotle.”
All his life he was captivated by the beauty and majesty of the Byzantine court, the like of which
he created in his own new capital, Great Preslav. This did not make him neglect Bulgaria, how-
ever; on the contrary, he carried Boris‟ dream to paradoxical extremes. Had not the time come
when Bulgaria should assume the place of the decrepit empire and become the heir to Christian
theocracy, and a Bulgarian khan crown his head with the sacred diadem of the Byzantine basi-
leus? Thus Byzantine theocratic ideas, which had shaped the barbarians, had given them a wea-

134
pon against Byzantium itself and shown them what program to follow. Their aim, and the limit
of their desires, was St. Sophia, heaven on earth, the sole heart of the Christian universe. Simeon
was the first of a long line of Slavic competitors for title to the Orthodox empire, which the
Greeks had guarded so jealously and monopolistically.
Almost his whole reign was spent in warfare against Byzantium — the first great civil
war in the Orthodox world. Bulgarian troops stood under the walls of Constantinople; but the
time had not yet come for the empire to yield. Failing to conquer Byzantium, like his grandfa-
ther, Simeon appealed to Rome, and received the title of “Emperor” for himself and of “Pa-
triarch” for his archbishop. True, this was pure fiction; there was no acceptance of Rome in Bul-
garia at the time. But the fiction is an eloquent indication of the strength of the theocratic dream
that possessed him.
The main significance of Simeon‟s reign was as a golden age in the history of Church
Slavonic writing, a genuine flourishing of Slavic Christian culture. He spared no resources for its
creation; he built schools and libraries and assembled whole armies of translators. The store of
Church Slavonic writings composed in his reign was sufficient for the needs not only of Bulga-
ria, but later for the Serbian and Russian Churches. Of course this whole culture was not and
could not be original. Simeon himself had been a pupil in Byzantium, and the work of Cyril and
Methodius had also been nourished at Byzantine springs. In various ways Bulgaria was repeating
and assimilating the Byzantine experience. One historian has correctly called this cultural blos-
soming under Simeon “the Hellenization of Bulgaria.” Thus the Slavic element was shaped by
Hellenism, and so Slavic Byzantinism arose.
First place in this cultural activity was taken by translations of Byzantine writers: the Fa-
thers of the Church, historians, and hymn-writers. Clement of Ochrida himself composed a life
of St. Methodius, following Byzantine models, and translated a whole host of liturgical texts,
saints‟ lives, and works of the Fathers. Dependence on Byzantium is also reflected in the re-
placement of the Glagolitic (Slavic) alphabet, which had been invented by Cyril, by the Cyrillic
(mistakenly attributed to Cyril), which appeared about the same time and more resembled the
Greek.
Thus the young Bulgarian kingdom acquired a sort of encyclopedia of contemporary By-
zantine culture, which defined forever the development of Slavic Christianity. Although politi-
cally and even ecclesiastically independent of Byzantium, Simeon‟s Bulgaria was completely
nourished by the Byzantine spirit. The Slavic language itself, when it became Church Slavonic,
was almost a copy of the Greek. Dvornik has said that Bulgaria was “Slavic by language, Byzan-
tine by spirit, and became the bearer of Byzantinism to the other Slavs, the Serbs and especially
the Russians.”
After the death of Simeon the decline of the first Bulgarian kingdom set in. In the tenth
century the military might of Byzantium rose again; it was the Byzantine epic era, a restoration
of all its strength and glory. This inevitably brought on a struggle against the hated Bulgarian
competitor. In 972 the whole eastern part of Bulgaria was conquered and Byzantine theory im-
mediately put into effect: Patriarch Damian was deposed and the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian
Church was simply placed under Constantinople. The western part of the kingdom, the Macedo-
nian and Albanian regions centered at Ochrida, survived until 1018, and the autocephalous Bul-
garian Church survived with it. But then, after thirty years of warfare between the Byzantine Ba-
sil II Bulgaroctonus and the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel — celebrated in Bulgarian tradition (he had
taken the title of “Tsar” after dethroning one of the Russian tsars in war with Constantinople) —
Bulgarian independence was destroyed and the Church shared its fate.

135
Reading the accounts of this war, unequalled in cruelty and ferocity, during which the
pious Byzantine autocrat ordered the eyes of fifteen thousand captives put out and sent back to
the aged Samuel, it is dreadful to think that this was a war between Orthodox, and that both sides
were inspired and nourished by the same “theocracy,” that terrible, ineradicable falsehood of By-
zantium and of the whole age of Constantine.
Once he had eliminated his enemy, it is true, Basil showed magnanimity: Bulgarian
nobles were given Byzantine titles and the archbishopric of Ochrida received an apparent auton-
omy, but in another, Byzantine sense. Actually, Bulgaria was subjected to a compulsory Greek
influence for almost two centuries, and the spirit of the Greeks toward the Bulgars is seen in the
writings of Greek pastors about their Bulgarian flocks. “He stinks of rot, as the Bulgarian stinks
of sheep” — so someone was described by Theophylact of Bulgaria, a celebrated eleventh-
century Byzantine hierarch, theologian, and expert on Homer — for him the Bulgarian nature
was the “mother of all evils.”
The Bulgarian Empire would rise again with new strength at the end of the twelfth cen-
tury, when Byzantium grew weaker. This was the so-called Empire of Trnovo, linked with the
names of the Asen brothers, fighters for national independence. It began with the now-familiar
threat of an appeal to Rome. If Byzantium would not recognize it, Rome would; the main goal
was to achieve empire and the condition necessary for it, an independent patriarchate. Johannitsa
Kalojan (1197-1207), the younger of the Asen brothers, appealed to Pope Innocent III, greatest
of the medieval popes, in whose time the theory that the pope was the head of all Christian
peoples reached its apex. Just when Orthodox Byzantium was falling under the blows of the Cru-
saders (1204), Kalojan was crowned by a Roman cardinal “Emperor of the Bulgars and Vlachs.”
Yet this did not prevent him from making war upon the Latin masters of Constantinople,
capturing Emperor Baldwin, and, despite all intercessions of the pope, putting him to death. The
unity of Christian peoples was becoming more and more a bitter parody. Later the orientation
changed again and Ivan Asen II (1218-41) entered into an “Orthodox coalition” with the Greek
emperors of Nicaea, receiving in return Greek recognition of the Trnovo autonomy. Again it was
recognition by necessity, which the Greeks would repudiate at their first chance.
So it continued until the very end, when the Bulgarian Empire was destroyed by the
Turks at the end of the fourteenth century. Rupture and ties, alliances and wars; no one could
solve the dispute by force any longer. The Orthodox empires were drawing to a close, but even
the approach of the end could not change anything in their passionate dream — ”in Christ God
the faithful Emperor and autocrat of the Bulgars and Greeks,” title of the last of the Bulgarian
emperors. If only nominally, they felt themselves bearers of a single theocratic tradition. This
was its last triumph in the consciousness of the Orthodox, and the time of its decay in real life.
As in Byzantium, only in the hush of monasteries, far from the unfortunate theocratic de-
cor, could a genuine Christian soul grow and mature, and the real fruits of baptism be produced.
Such were John of Rila, the martyrs of Trnovo, the disciples of the Hesychasts (the “little Athos”
in Sofia); mention should also be made of the constant growth of theological interest, reflected in
Church Slavonic writings. The theocratic dream of the Bulgarian Empire would perish like the
dream of Byzantium, but the illumination of Bulgarian Orthodoxy would leave a deep trace, and
would bear imperishable fruit in the later development of the Orthodox East.

The Serbian Empire.
The history of the rise of the Serbian Empire in these same centuries is in many ways a
repetition of the Bulgarian experience. Here, too, the story begins with a partitioned tribal life

136
and passes through the first contact with Byzantium and early Christianization. Constantine Por-
phyrogenitus places this in the seventh century during the reign of Heraclius. In the ninth century
the heritage of Cyril and Methodius reached the Serbs from neighboring Pannonia and Bulgaria
and established Eastern Byzantine Christianity among them permanently. In the ninth and tenth
centuries the first town representing a state capital was established at Rashka, where the grand
zupans ruled. During the intense struggle between Byzantium and Bulgaria, the Serbs fell by
turns into the sphere of influence of one or the other, and the see of Rashka was subject to Con-
stantinople, Bulgaria or Ochrida, depending on the circumstances. Yet under all these changing
influences a national Serbian self-consciousness grew and became established. It grew, of
course, in proportion as the Serbs adopted Byzantine ideas, m either their Greek or their Bulga-
rian version. Here, too, the “Roman temptation” came to life; in 1078 the Grand Zupan Michael
received a king‟s crown from Pope Gregory V. By the middle of the twelfth century Serbia al-
ready had all the elements of statehood, and the time was drawing near for her to take on the
same Byzantine theocracy and enter the lists as a possible heir to Byzantium.
This was the work of the famous Nemanya. By a series of wars against other zupans and
against Byzantium, he united the Serbs, and a theocratic theme immediately entered the situation.
Stephen the First-Crowned, his son, began by flirting with Rome; this was the era of Innocent III
and the first fall of Byzantium. Later the orientation changed, apparently under the influence of
Stephen‟s younger brother. This was Sava, the monk of Athos, who there founded the famous
Serbian monastery of Hilandar together with his father, the aged Nemanya, also a monk of Athos
in his old age.
Soon afterward Sava went to Nicaea, where the capital of the Byzantine Empire had been
transferred after the destruction of 1204. At this time the Byzantines were seeking allies against
their Latin conquerors and it was very important for them to prevent the Slavs from passing into
the Latin orbit. Therefore they agreed to the autonomy of the Serbian Church and to installing
Sava as its first archbishop. When he returned to Serbia, he established the ecclesiastical center
of the new empire at the monastery of Zica. He divided the country into dioceses and conse-
crated his disciples. Then he completed a solemn “revival” of Christianity in Serbia. A council of
all the clergy was assembled in Zica, a special service performed, and after it the archbishop an-
nounced on behalf of the whole people a solemn confession of faith and a curse against all here-
sies. As the final act and logical consequence of all that had gone before, he again (1221)
crowned his brother Stephen. After holding office for fourteen years, in which he established
both Church and empire, Sava made his disciple Arsenius archbishop and himself set off for the
holy places. He died in Bulgaria, at the capital of his relative, Emperor Ivan Asen, in 1236. The
day consecrated to his memory has remained a national Serbian holiday, for St. Sava was the fa-
ther of both Serbian Orthodoxy and Serbian statehood.
Subsequent history of the Serbian Empire only recapitulates the familiar pattern: the same
complex relations with Rome, the same political question of union, the constant shifts in orienta-
tion for or against the Greeks. The last flourishing of Serbia was the reign of Stephen Dushan
(1331-55), when the country almost achieved the original dream of the Slavs: establishment of a
united empire under the Slavic banner. Dushan‟s policy had a single aim, to capture Constanti-
nople, unite Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks under his rule, and eliminate the growing Turkish threat
by these combined efforts. In 1346 he was crowned in his capital, Skoplje, “Emperor of the
Serbs and Greeks,” and prior to this he had elevated the archbishop of Serbia to patriarch in
Pech. He flirted with Rome, however, and was excommunicated for it by the Church of Constan-
tinople. In the autumn of 1355 he prepared for a final march on Constantinople. Never had the

137
dream of a Slavic replacement of Byzantium seemed so near realization. The empire was saved
by Dushan‟s unexpected death.

Early Slavic Orthodoxy.
But the end of all empires, the Turkish Horde, was fast approaching, and with it the de-
struction of the great theocratic dreams. Perhaps in this first flowering of Slavic Christianity, we
can best discern the results of the late Byzantine chapter in the history of the Orthodox Church
— both the intrinsic narrowness of its religious and political idea and the spiritual vitality of By-
zantine Orthodoxy itself. In the Slavic version of Byzantinism, Church and empire sprang from
the same idea, the same outlook, originating from the empire although directed against it. This
hostility, the basic distortion of the Byzantine heritage, survives down to our own time. Yet it is
characteristic that the mortal antagonism of the Slavic empires to Byzantium, which lasted for
centuries and shed so much Orthodox blood, in no way destroyed the unity of the Byzantine style
of Orthodoxy itself, and Slavic Christianity was and remained primarily a precise reflection, re-
petition, and development of Byzantine Christianity. If this Slavic Orthodoxy is seen distinct
from its external political fate, we see a truly united Orthodox world, which has one personality
and is nourished by the same roots, filled with the same spirit. This unity proved stronger than
political and national divisions. Byzantinism simultaneously poisoned the Slavic world by its
theocratic messianism, and fertilized it forever with the inexhaustible riches of its Chalcedonian
striving toward God-Manhood. In addition to its saints and martyrs, the striking religious art of
the Balkan churches, only now beginning to reveal its spiritual beauty to the world, is a silent
witness to the profound Christianization of the Slavic psyche, and its receptivity to the highest
ideal of Christian Byzantium.
The dark ages of Turkish control would not obliterate this Orthodox seal upon the exter-
nally divided but fundamentally united Byzantine Christian world.

5. The Dark Ages.

Turkish Conquest.
On May 29, 1453, after a two-day assault, the troops of Mohammed II took Constanti-
nople. The last emperor, Constanline XI, had fallen in battle. The holy city became the capital of
the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria was overcome, Serbia was finally conquered in 1459, European
Greece in 1459-60, Bosnia in 1463, and finally Egypt in 1517. The whole Orthodox East, except
for Russia, was under Islamic rule, which was to last for more than four centuries. The era of the
great eclipse of Orthodoxy had come, leaving a deep imprint on the mind of the Eastern Church.
In defining the nature of the Turkish yoke, one must first emphasize that it was not a per-
secution of Christianity. When Mohammed entered the city, after three days of pillage, outrages,
and revelry after victory, he announced “law, mercy, and order.” He was no barbarian; he had
been in Constantinople before and knew Greek, and while conquering Byzantium he was at-
tracted to it by his special sympathy for everything Greek. A historian has remarked that his en-
tourage included “sympathetic Christians as secretaries, since the Turks were very poorly edu-
cated.” The same historian wrote that “Christians administered his whole Empire.” This was an
exaggeration, but it is not without foundation; Mohammed undoubtedly dreamed of strengthen-
ing and ornamenting his empire with Greek culture. In addition, although the Koran taught that

138
Christians were unbelievers, it recognized Christ as a prophet and showed respect for Him.
Therefore one of the first acts of Mohammed after victory was an invitation to the Greeks to
elect their own patriarch.
They chose Gennadius Scholarius, who had participated in the Council of Florence but
had been converted by Mark of Ephesus from sympathy to Rome to a fanatic hostility to union.
The Turks also invited them to put Church life in order and return to their accustomed occupa-
tions. Later a firman, the highest state charter of the sultan, defined once and for all the legal sta-
tus of Christians within the empire. All Christians were obliged to pay an annual head tax, the
haradj, to the state treasury, but this was their only obligation to the conquerors. In return the
patriarch was given complete freedom in administering Church affairs, and no one was permitted
to interfere with his orders. The persons of the patriarch, bishops, and priests were proclaimed
inviolable; all the clergy were exempted from taxes. Half of the churches of Constantinople were
converted into mosques, but the rest were at the disposal of the Christians. In all matters pertain-
ing to internal ecclesiastical administration the canons remained in force; the Porte did not in-
fringe in any way upon the independence of Church administration. Freedom of Church feasts
and of public worship was recognized; marriages, funerals, and other Church ceremonies were
celebrated openly and without hindrance. The solemn celebration of Easter was permitted in all
cities and villages. The Church was allowed to remain the Church and Christians were allowed to
remain Christians.
But another basic element in the status of Christians under the Turks was no less impor-
tant. For the Turks, who unlike the Arabs were not religious fanatics, Christianity was the na-
tional faith of the Greeks, as Mohammedanism was for the Turks. Like Judaism, Islam in general
made no distinction between secular and religious society. To the extent that the whole civil
structure of Mohammedan society-state, courts, law, and everything else was defined by Islam, it
was inapplicable to non-Mohammedans. Therefore the Christians in the Ottoman Empire re-
ceived the “rights” of a national as well as religious minority, and these concepts were merged
into one. The patriarch became the milet pasha or leader of the people, and the Church hierarchy
were given the rights of civil administration over the Christian population. It judged Christians
according to Greek laws, its court was recognized by the Porte, and sentences were carried out
by the Turkish authorities. Christians could have their own schools, their own programs, and
their own censorship. Theoretically the Church became a sort of state within a state.

Christians Under Turkish Rule.
The position of the Church in the Turkish empire might therefore be considered as firmly
established. This was only its outward aspect, however. Actually its position was very often a
terrible one, and it is impossible to describe all the suffering, humiliation, and outright persecu-
tion the Church was obliged to undergo in this age, which was dark indeed. The “rights” just
mentioned were not rights at all in our sense of the word, but represented the mercy of the sultan.
The Turkish cast of mind was no less theocratic than the Roman, which had however been miti-
gated by an ancient and well-constructed juridical tradition. The Turkish sultan was the source of
all rights and of mercy, as well as of the lack of it, and he was accountable to no one for his ac-
tions. According to Islam, Christians were rayah or cattle, the conquered, the unbelievers, and
they had no real rights or citizenship. If all sultans had been on the same high cultural and politi-
cal level as Mohammed II, his firman might have been observed, but it was broken even by Mo-

139
hammed himself, when he took away from Patriarch Gennadius the Church of the Twelve Apos-
tles, which he had previously granted to him.
Shortly after, a period of political decline set in for the Ottoman Empire, and arbitrari-
ness, unscrupulousness, and corruption became the rule. The sultans fleeced their pashas, who in
turn fleeced the Christians. There was no one to whom one could complain. The situation wor-
sened perceptibly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the bleakest in the history of the
Church. As the Russian historian, Kartashoff, has remarked, Turkey could have been swept away
by any of the European powers in this period, but Europe supported her for fear of Russia, and
closed its eyes to the scandalous sufferings of the Christians. In some places every Christian was
slaughtered. Russia alone intervened on their behalf, but this frequently resulted only in a wor-
sening of their position.
The rights of the patriarch were gradually reduced to nothing; all that was left to him was
the “right” of being responsible for the Christians. In the course of seventy-three years in the
eighteenth century, the patriarch was replaced forty-eight times! Some were deposed and reins-
talled as many as five times; many were put to torture. The rebellions of the Janissaries were ac-
companied by terrible bloodshed. Churches were defiled, relics cut to pieces, and the Holy Gifts
profaned. Christian pogroms became more and more frequent. In the nineteenth century Turkey
was simply rotting away, but the “sick man of Europe” was supported at all points by other na-
tions in opposition to Russia. There was, it is true, a series of reforms by which the sultans at-
tempted to Europeanize Turkey and thus improve the position of the Christians; actually their
situation grew worse, especially as national self-consciousness and dreams of freedom arose
within the empire. Greeks in Turkey and Constantinople paid for the Greek uprising of 1821 by
terrible slaughter.
That year was marked by the martyrdom of Patriarch Gregory V. He was not saved even
by the decree of excommunication he brought himself to issue against the rebels, his own fellow
believers, and later he redeemed this cowardice by his faithfulness to Christ at the hour of death.
When it was suggested to him that he recant his faith, he answered, “You are laboring in vain;
the Christian patriarch will die a Christian.” This was on Easter Sunday, 1821. In the morning
the patriarch had performed the Easter liturgy and had called on all, on this great feast, to forget
all earthly cares. After distributing an Easter egg to everyone, he was arrested and hanged that
same day at the gates of the patriarchate.
None of the laws promulgated by the Turkish Government to placate European public
opinion helped the Christians. After the Crimean War, for example, during which the Turks were
allies of England and France, and after the Peace of Paris of 1856, Sultan Abdul Medjid “out of
ceaseless concern for the welfare of his subjects” issued the well-known Gatti-Gamayun, or de-
cree written by his own hand, according to which the Christians were granted equal rights with
the Moslems. What joy there was then in Europe! Actually, as Professor Lopukhin has pointed
out, it meant

. . . that the Christian subjects of the Sultan, whatever oppression and humiliation they
were suffering, were now unable to rely on any outside help but were obliged to count
solely on their own resources . . . Since Turkey remained in the same disorganized, ele-
mental state, the deliberate idolizing of her by European diplomacy in 1856 had never be-
fore been so sharply contradictory to the facts. This policy was shamefully exposed by
the subsequent course of events during the last years of the reign of Abdul Medjid, when

140
the Greeks, as a result of the Gatti-Gamayun, not only remained in a dreadful social and
economic state, but even lost many of their former rights and privileges.
34

The whole second half of the nineteenth century was marked by Christian uprisings and bloody
reprisals from the Turks. A period of open struggle and slaughter began, on a scale hitherto un-
known — all at a time when benevolent European liberalism was triumphant in the West. The
year 1861 was marked by uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia,
and Bulgaria; 1866 by a rebellion on the island of Crete; and 1875 again in Bosnia and Herzego-
vina. These uprisings prepared the way for a new chapter in the history of the Orthodox Church.

Rise of Religious Nationalism
The era of the Turkish yoke was marked in the history of Orthodoxy by an unprecedented
rise of religious nationalism. Its roots, as we already have seen, lay deep in the spirit of Byzantin-
ism itself, which made an absolute value out of the concept of the “holy state.” Yet this concept
had arisen and developed at first in the context of Roman universalism. Rome had deified the
state, not the nation. The multinational empire thought it had overcome all national limitations; it
saw itself as a “universe” united by a single law, a single authority, a single culture, with faith in
the same values, but had no racial features of any sort, or any exaltation of “flesh and blood.”
Any barbarian who accepted Roman citizenship and shared the cultural values of Hellenism
would cease to be a barbarian and become a full member of that universe, a member of a united
human society in which all the best elements lived according to values which were opposed to
racial exclusivism of any sort. This universal spirit of Rome was its main point of alliance with
Christianity, which was universal and all-embracing by its very nature.
The Church accepted alliance with the empire, placed itself under its protection, and
gladly sanctified it by its blessing because the empire itself was aware that it was summoned to a
universal mission and that this calling was in no way limited. It must be admitted that at first the
empire really lived according to this inspiration. Constantine, for example, considered himself
responsible for spreading Christianity in Persia, and missions went out of early Byzantium to the
Armenians, Georgians, Goths, Huns, and finally to the Slavs. The inclusion of barbarian peoples
who had accepted Christianity within the empire was not dictated by political imperialism alone
but also by the conviction that the empire was the normal form for the Christian world, which
was united because it was Christian.
The first breach in this universalism was the division of the empire itself, which ended
with the separation of its Western part. Still, the authority of the empire was recognized by the
barbarians who came to power in the West, even if only nominally, so that the Byzantine theory
remained inviolate. The conflict with the West in the period of the Crusades had tragic conse-
quences, as we have seen. Byzantine patriotism, which had previously fed upon the imperial uni-
versal dream, was gradually transformed into nationalism; from an affirmative feeling it became
a negative passion, a rejection of everything alien and a morbid sense of what was native.
This transformation became particularly obvious in the period of the kingdom of Nicaea
in the thirteenth century, when the Latins ruled in the consecrated capital of the empire. Ortho-
doxy itself, which had consistently been accepted as the universal truth, able to subdue all

34
A. P. Lopukhin, The History of the Christian Church in the Nineteenth Century (in Russian,
St. Petersburg, 1901), Vol. 2, The Orthodox East, pp. 47-48.

141
peoples in the period of the Fathers, was now emerging as something Greek, in contrast to the
Latin, Western faith. “Hellenism,” which the Fathers had regarded as a synonym for paganism,
acquired a new meaning in the late Byzantine period; it was conceived to be the source of na-
tional tradition, and the revival of it under the Paleologi was strongly colored by nationalistic
feelings.
We may see that while the official ideology of Byzantium remained unalterably univer-
sal, despite specific historical failures, the progressive geographical shrinking of the empire in-
creasingly injected a national Greek element into its ideology, the final value of which was Hel-
lenism and not the Christian empire. While Byzantium resisted any division into independent
kingdoms and autocephalies on the grounds of its “universalism,” in practice it imposed Greek
culture on the Slavs — and this in the most concrete way, as we see from the domination of
Greek bishops in conquered Bulgaria and their scornful attitude toward any native differences,
even in language. This made the decay of the Orthodox world inevitable and forced the Slavs,
like the Armenians and Syrians before them, to hate the Greeks. While the decay of Byzantine
Christian universalism was an accomplished fact by the time of the Turkish conquest, the Tur-
kish yoke, paradoxically enough, restored it. Since they made no distinction between religion and
nationality, the Turks regarded the Christians primarily as a people, as a single whole led by the
patriarch of Constantinople. (They would indeed be one people if they recalled the early Chris-
tian experience of the Church as a “new people,” and the definition of the Christian as the “lay-
man” — from Greek laos, the people, meaning one of them.)
Strangely, the Byzantines were relatively indifferent to the destruction of the empire,
which had held such an immense and central position in Byzantine thought. The documents do
not show that they felt it as a crisis or failure of their most treasured dream. Byzantine thought of
the fifteenth century had already experienced the inward replacement of the imperial idea by that
of Hellenism, and Hellenism was not only not eliminated under Turkish rule, but acquired an un-
precedented authority in the person of the ecumenical patriarch. In the Turkish captivity the im-
perial power itself passed to the patriarch. The clear boundary between Church and state had dis-
appeared long before in Byzantine thought, and now those who bore authority in the two spheres
were also merged. This was possible because both Church and empire referred, as it were, to the
same object: the Greek people, bearers of the eternal values of Hellenism, which were becoming
increasingly independent values in themselves for the Greeks. The empire might narrow down to
only the rayah; the task of its leader, the patriarch, then, was to preserve the faith and Hellenism
(one was inconceivable without the other) until a future restoration. “The Patriarch sat down
upon the throne . . . The bishops bowed down to him as their lord, as their emperor and pa-
triarch.” After quoting these words of a Greek historian, Professor Lebedev continued:

Their first thought in this case was that they had elected a new emperor, and the idea that
they had obtained a legitimate patriarch in his person took second place. For them he was
not patriarch because he was emperor as well, but rather, he was also the emperor be-
cause he was the patriarch. The Patriarch of the New Rome was, as it were, the Byzantine
Emperor languishing in captivity, deprived of his freedom but not of his authority. His
head was ornamented by a mitre in the form of a crown, depicting the two-headed eagle
of Byzantium, but in his hand was the patriarchal staff, which he did not carry in vain.
35

35
A. Lebedev, The History of the Graeco-Eastern Church under the Turks (in Russian, St. Pe-
tersburg, 1903), p. 29.

142

Greek Control of Outlying Orthodox Areas.
When they received this power, not only ecclesiastical but national as well, the like of
which they had not had in the last centuries of the empire, the Byzantine patriarchs did every-
thing they could to establish permanently the triumph of the Greeks over all the Slavic minorities
they had previously been forced to recognize. The Turkish period is marked by disgraceful inter-
nal struggle within the Orthodox rayah itself — and for what cause? Because of that same pas-
sionate nationalism which was stifling the awareness of the unity of the Church of Christ more
and more with each century. Unfortunately, the Turkish concept of religion had long ago become
the Christian concept as well.
The Christians painlessly and without embarrassment accepted the prohibition against
converting Moslems, thus rejecting the universal calling of the Church; but they expended great
effort — aided by the Moslems — in humiliating, subjugating, and subduing their own brothers
in the faith. Themselves humiliated, exiled, and killed — so frequently only pawns in the hands
of the Phanariots, Greeks who had grown rich in Turkish service — the patriarchs of Constanti-
nople systematically endeavored not only to subdue all the Slavic churches which had previously
been autocephalic, but also to make them Greek, eliminating any memory of their Slavic past.
The patriarchate of Trnovo was eliminated almost immediately after the Turkish conquest
of Bulgaria. As early as 1394 a Greek metropolitan had been sent from Constantinople, and the
patriarchate was changed into a division of the patriarchate of Constantinople. The other inde-
pendent Bulgarian eparchy of Ochrida, established in 1018 when the Greeks destroyed the first
Bulgarian kingdom, lasted until 1776, when the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, Samuel I,
completed the “unification” of the Orthodox Church. The year before he had succeeded in elimi-
nating the Serbian patriarchate at Pech by paying its debts to the Turkish treasury. Everywhere
former bishops who were native Bulgars and Serbs were deposed and replaced by Greeks. This
canonical abuse of power was accompanied by forced “Grecizing,” particularly in Bulgaria,
where it later served as the basis of the so-called Bulgarian question.
The same sad picture prevailed in the East as well, in the patriarchates of Jerusalem, An-
tioch, and Alexandria, where Orthodox Arabs became the victims of this forced unification. All
these offenses, stored up and concealed — all these unsettled accounts and intrigues — would
have their effect when the Turkish hold began to slacken and the hour for the rebirth of the Slav-
ic peoples drew near.
The Orthodox Church would enter this new period deeply disunited by these national-
isms, having lost the consciousness of its universal mission. Broken up into little worlds that
treated each other with suspicion and hostility and felt no need for each other, it submitted to
what Solovyov called the “provincialism of local traditions.”
36
Having first become Eastern, Or-
thodoxy would now become thoroughly national.
The root of the evil did not lie in the national element as such. The universal empire had
long ago become a fiction, and with the co-operation of the Church had been replaced by these
national states of mind, which found in Christianity a source of nourishment for their growth,
establishment, and national contribution to Christian truth. The nation and the people are as
much a natural fact as society; therefore the positive aspect of its Christian meaning could and

36
V. Solovyov (1853-1900), Russian philosopher and an acute critic of Orthodox Byzantinism.
Cf. His book, Russia and the Universal Church (London, 1948).

143
should be revealed within the Church. It was revealed in its own fashion during the period of the
Turkish domination, when the people merged entirely with the Church and made it the bearer of
all their best national ideals. The tragedy, however, was that it also tainted national self-
consciousness with hostility to other Orthodox peoples, and thus the living unity of the Church
was betrayed, replaced by a theoretical unity. The Church became not only the bearer of the
Christian ideal but also a symbol of national struggle — a source of religious nationalism that
poisons the Orthodox East down to the present day. Summoned to enlighten everything in the
world by the Spirit and by truth, in the final analysis the Church itself submits to “flesh and
blood,” Christian patriotism mingling with pagan nationalism.

Cultural Decline.
No less tragic was the decline of ecclesiastical education during the period of Turkish
rule. True, even before the fall of the empire education had been aristocratic, not available to the
broad masses within the Church. The faithful were educated by the services, and our liturgical
texts themselves bear witness to the high level of knowledge of the people of the Church. It can-
not be said that education died out completely during the Turkish period, but it declined and,
most important, its spirit changed. Its purpose now was to preserve the spirit of Hellenism in its
most extreme nationalistic form. According to a Russian traveler in Turkey in the nineteenth cen-
tury,

The academic love of Hellenism, without systematic study of it, satisfied with excerpts,
leads only to a limited, onesided education which is next door to ignorance. The conse-
quence of it is pedantry and pomposity, resulting from a ridiculous desire to apply ancient
Hellenic phrases in simple conversation, and, finally, scorn for ordinary but useful know-
ledge. The teachers prefer to explain something about the state of the country two thou-
sand years ago than to acquaint people with its contemporary situation. Byzantine arrog-
ance, which acknowledges that a man is of value only if he is a Greek, continues to sow
the most nonhumanistic concepts among Christians.
37

School education in one form or another never ceased. The Patriarchal Academy in Constanti-
nople lasted throughout the period of Turkish rule, while the school of Patmos, where its founder
the priest-monk Macarius taught without compensation for twenty-five years, and the school of
Janina have left illustrious and memorable traces. The Athenian Academy of Eugenius Bulgaris
had a brief but brilliant history: “I have been told that the monks set fire to it intentionally,”
wrote Bishop Porphyry Uspensky, a Russian expert on the East, “for they thought that scholar-
ship is not necessary for the life to come.”
Yet the general level of education was very low. In the sixteenth century the metropolitan
of Thessalonica claimed that “not one monk in the diocese knows ancient Greek or understands
Church prayers,” and at the beginning of the nineteenth century Constantine Oikonomos said that
“simple reading of the service books, and often very badly at that, as long as it was done in a me-
lodious voice, was the sole qualification for the position of priest or deacon.” Only by the middle
of the nineteenth century was the need for special theological education recognized, and the first
seminary was opened on the island of Chalcis in 1844.

144
From this it is clear that the theological tradition was not maintained at the high level
which was maintained, despite all internal difficulties, to the very end of Byzantium. One may
note here a theme that persisted throughout the whole Turkish period: the polemic against alien
ways of worship, particularly against the Latins and later the Protestants. The enslavement of the
Greeks by the Turks had opened new perspectives to the papacy, of which it unfortunately had
not hesitated to take advantage. The whole period was marked by constantly increasing Latin
propaganda in the East, and such prosletyzing injected new venom into relations between the se-
parated Christian worlds. Whole armies of skillful propagandists were sent to the East, prepared
in special schools, the most famous of which was the College of St. Athanasius in Rome, opened
by Pope Gregory XIII in 1577. A network of Roman episcopates covered the whole Orthodox
East.
It must be admitted that the Greek polemicists were not able to respond to this well-
prepared attack in any substantial way. In most cases they simply repeated old Byzantine argu-
ments which had long since lost their point. “The Orthodox had hardly bothered to study the Lat-
in Church, either its morals or its ideals,” Lebedev has written, “and they retained the same ante-
diluvian concepts of the Latins as they had of Egyptian torture chambers. The Latins had pro-
gressed in their ecclesiastical development, and when the Greeks were forced to answer them
they floundered about in a sort of vicious circle.” However painful it is to admit, the deep-rooted
hatred for the Latins that led Greeks even to rebaptize Catholics was primarily responsible for
preserving Orthodoxy. Nicodemus the Hagorite wrote in his Peddion, “The fact that we have felt
hatred and repulsion for the Latins for so many centuries shows that we think they are heretics,
like the Arians, and the Sabellians.” The Turks, however, who disliked and feared the Latins as
“representatives of European imperialism,” protected the Orthodox. When in the eighteenth cen-
tury the Orthodox in Syria complained to the Porte of Catholic propaganda, the following decree
was issued:

Some of the devilish French monks, with evil purposes and unjust intentions, are passing
through the country and are filling the Greek rayah with their worthless French doctrine;
by means of stupid speeches they are deflecting the rayah from its ancient faith and are
inculcating the French faith. Such French monks have no right to remain anywhere ex-
cept in those places where their consuls are located; they should not undertake any jour-
neys or engage in missionary work.
38

The text needs no comment; here are the results of the separation of the churches in the eigh-
teenth century.

Silence of Orthodox Theology.
Most important of all, during the Reformation, at the most critical point in the ecclesias-
tical history of the Christian West — a period of review and re-evaluation of traditional values in
the West — the Orthodox Church was mute, and because of this the Western dispute was one-
sided, deprived of any genuine universal perspective. The East could only fence itself off, defend
itself, preserve; it lacked resources to contribute its own experience or its uninterrupted tradition
as a way out of Western blind alleys. The first Reformers, convinced that in combating the papa-

38
Ibid.

145
cy and medieval Catholicism they were returning to apostolic Christianity, made attempts to ap-
peal to the Eastern Church as the arbiter of their dispute with Rome. Negotiations with the Prot-
estants were particularly energetic under Patriarch Jeremiah II (1572-95), who subjected the
Augsburg Confession, which had been sent to him, to a detailed analysis and exposed its obvious
heresy from the Orthodox point of view. “You can never be in agreement with us, or rather, say
with the truth,” wrote Jeremiah, “And we beg you not to trouble us further, not to write us or ap-
peal to us while you go on reinterpreting the guiding lights of the Church and its theologians in
other ways, paying them respect in words but repudiating them in deeds . . . Go your way, and
write us no more about dogmas.”
The Orthodox Church could reject and condemn Protestantism, as it could fence itself off
from Catholic advances, but unfortunately it could not perform its duty to bear witness to Ortho-
doxy and reveal its vital and creative significance. Moreover, from that time on Western Catholic
and Protestant influences gradually began to penetrate into Orthodox theology itself, inculcating
a sense of inferiority toward everything Western, and for a long while pulling it away from its
own heritage. This influence came in through the young people who were sent to study in the
West — in England, Switzerland, and Denmark — and who, lacking a firm foundation in their
own faith, were easily infected with the latest Western theological fashions, absorbed its theolog-
ical and spiritual atmosphere, and then became teachers of the Orthodox clergy. A clear example
of this process is the well-known case of Cyril Lucaris, who as patriarch of Constantinople pub-
lished his Confession of the Orthodox Faith in Geneva in 1629, a document, which was com-
pletely Protestant in content and inspiration.
But this is far from the only example. As time went on, it became increasingly clear that
even if the Orthodox Church managed to preserve its independence from the Catholics and the
Protestants, Orthodox theology had lost that independence and had changed into either a bare
and sweeping denial of the West by means of dubious arguments, or a sort of compromise be-
tween Catholic and Protestant extremes.
After the fall of Byzantium only the West theologized. Theology is essentially a task of
the universal Church, but it was only taken up separately, in schism. This is the basic paradox in
the history of Christian culture. The West was theologizing when the East was mute, or, even
worse, was repeating Western lessons without reflection. Until the present time the Orthodox
theologian has been too dependent on Western support for his own constructive work. He re-
ceived his primary sources from Western hands, read the Fathers and the acts of the councils in
Western editions (which often were not accurate), and learned the techniques of dealing with the
assembled material in a Western school.
39

Our knowledge of the history of our own Church is primarily due to the achievements of
many generations of Western scholars. This applies both to the accumulation and the interpreta-
tion of the facts . . . Western thought always lives in this past, with an intensity of historical re-
collection, as if to compensate for the painful gaps in its own mystical memory. The Orthodox
theologian also ought to bear witness to this world, a witness drawn from the internal memory of
the Church.
40

Nationalistic feeling, the decline of education, the petrifaction of theology, the poison of
temptations from other forms of worship — these were the negative aspects of this period in the
history of the Orthodox Church. Its historical perspective was narrowed at this time, and unfa-

146
vorable outward conditions were not solely responsible for this. Even today Orthodoxy has not
fully recovered from all these illnesses.

The Precious Core.
Nevertheless, we must also try to see something else, less obvious but perhaps more sig-
nificant in spiritual history, which cannot be measured by the usual historical instruments. Few
are those who have been able to find the unfading treasures that lay behind this bleak exterior;
the Russians, unfortunately, least of all, as they adopted the scorn of a great power for Eastern
Orthodoxy in its early period. Yet those few who, at a time when the Russian Church was out-
wardly at its height, made genuine contact with the Eastern Church were inwardly converted and
could no longer be satisfied with all the official splendor of imperial Russian Orthodoxy.
For alongside ignorance, chauvinism, avarice, and other sins, there continued to live in
the East a genuine Orthodox sense of the Church, which shone brighter in genuine spiritual beau-
ty after it had shed the “squalid luxury” of the last period of the empire. One of the sensitive ob-
servers of the Christian East, Archimandrite Antoninus Capustin, whose diplomatic service in
Constantinople, Athens, and Jerusalem brought him to recognize the universality of the Church
at a time when no one seemed to remember it, wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century:

It is enough to see the Greek in the ruins of Athens or the Arab in the mud huts of the Le-
vant, the Copt among the Libyan sands, or the Abyssinian . . . to become convinced that
here there is another belt of spiritual geography, and other plants flourish here which
have no need of our artificial fertilizers, nor waterings, nor graftings, nor our flowerpots
or hothouses. God grant that our hothouse piety be equal to them. It is sad for me to speak
against my own advantage, but what am I to do? As I stand in a wretched church in Suez
and am possessed with the memory of so many of the splendid sanctuaries known to me,
I would not be able to rise spiritually higher than the ugly and half-rotten rafters and
boards of the roof above me. But the local inhabitant unquestionably prays here with an
entirely Christian prayer to the heartrending sound of his native song. The wretchedness
of the church does not signify the wretchedness of God for him, and it is a blessing for
him.
41

In a letter to Metropolitan Philaret he wrote: “When I examined the details of the religious life of
the Greeks, I found in it so much of what we are taught in the Menologion and the Prologue that
I would be repudiating my calling as an Orthodox priest and monk if I kept it from my Church.”
There in the poverty-stricken East he suddenly became aware of a longing for the unity of Or-
thodoxy, for a new period in its history — a call “not for partitioning the Body of Christ any
longer according to countries, peoples, languages, passions, needs, governmental systems or
schools, but a reunification of all in a life together of the spirit of love, peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit . . .” and for the revival of “a single, organically alive, strong, ruling Orthodox Church of
Christ.”
42

Once more behind the official history, which is filled with decline, sins, and weaknesses,
another history is suggested, which contains the spirit of genuine Orthodoxy. In these years the

41
Kern, op. cit.
42
Cf. ibid.

147
Philokalia was completed, the peak of Eastern speculative experience, which by its profundity is
now beginning to win over even the non-Orthodox.
43
The threads binding all these bearers of the
age-old tradition into one family have not once been broken: the thirst for oneness with God, the
longing for a perfect life. The great culture of the spirit, to which none of the refinements of the
European nineteenth century can be compared in sensitivity, did not die. Only recently, when not
only official documents of the period but the popular legends of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria
began to be collected and studied, has it been realized how what is most essential and elusive in
Orthodoxy had entered the souls of the people.

Liberation.
In the nineteenth century the dawn of freedom began to break over the Orthodox East.
The Serbian uprisings of 1804 and 1815, the Greek uprising of 1821, and Russia‟s war of libera-
tion against Turkey in 1877 resulted in the rebirth of independent Orthodox states. Yet while na-
tional liberation freed the churches of these countries from Turkish control, it did not free them
from its tragic consequences: national hostility and proud self-assertion, infection with theories
alien to Orthodoxy, the subordination of the Church to the state or complete merging with it.
Eastern nationalism, born as we have seen out of the decay of the Byzantine theocratic con-
sciousness, now merged with a new, Western type of nationalism whose spirit had hovered over
Europe since the French Revolution. The Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian kings of the Byzantine
era had dreamed of a universal Orthodox empire; now the standard had become self-
determination of nations, national culture, and disputes over border provinces. The Bulgaria of
Simeon or the Serbia of Dushan might have dreamed of the conquest of Constantinople, but they
breathed and lived by a single Christian-Hellenic culture and a universal tradition of the Church
of the Fathers and the councils. Now what was “native,” however partial, incomplete, or de-
based, gradually overshadowed the whole horizon of thought and became the idol for whose sake
the great common past might be forgotten. If there was anything that could compete with this
idol of nationalism, it would now be the West, which had acquired a sort of mythical halo. Only
when the West itself finally came to recognize the value of the Byzantine icon, the profundity of
the works of the Fathers, or the beauty of Eastern singing, would the Orthodox begin to show a
certain interest in them. Before this happened, Western Europe became the real authority — po-
litical, spiritual, and even theological — for the Orthodox East. Traditional Orthodoxy was
found only in the villages and the lower classes; the upper classes had begun to measure their
faith and traditions by the standards of Oxford or Tübingen.
It is characteristic that after the uprising of 1821, when an independent kingdom of
Greece was founded, the Greek bishops themselves did not hesitate to be in schism with Con-
stantinople for almost twenty years in order to obtain their own autocephalous Church; they
hardly noticed that its constitution had actually been copied from Lutheran constitutions, and that
in general it did not recognize any boundary between Church and state. The same purely nationa-
listic motives, not at all theological, nourished the schism between Bulgaria and Greece which
persisted for sixty years, and similar causes led to the divisions between the Slavic states which
are still in force today. How easily the age-old tradition — genuine tradition and not folklore —
was sacrificed throughout these decades to pitiful imitations of the West! Konstantin Leontiev

43
Cf. English translation in E. Kadlubovsky and G.E.M. Palmer, Writings from the Philokalia
(London, 1951).

148
frequently and maliciously mocked this fascination with Western petty-bourgeois vulgarity,
44

which he contrasted to the Slavophil interests dominant in Russia; yet in his wrath we often dis-
cern a real assertion of the universality of Orthodoxy, so rare at that time, which had been de-
stroyed by the clamorous blossoming of local nationalisms. “He saw,” Berdyaev wrote, “that the
only reliable protection against the worldwide process of decay and vulgarization, which had in-
volved all the Balkan peoples, lay in faithfulness to the traditions of Byzantinism.”
We concede that Leontiev too frequently interpreted Byzantinism esthetically, in the spi-
rit of Western romanticism, but basically he was right; the voice of the Church was almost un-
heard in the free Orthodox states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their whole political
and state structure and their entire culture somehow “bypassed” Orthodoxy, or in any case were
not inspired by it, and the Church, for all its democratic guarantees, found itself held in honored
captivity by the state, without being aware of it. The extinction of monasticism; the transforma-
tion of the clergy into civil servants and of theology into an applied professional field of know-
ledge to serve the clergy, or else into a narrow specialization; the decline of the divine services,
which became either “showpieces” or performances from incomprehensible books; and finally,
the “politicizing” of the state of mind of the Church — all these were characteristic results of the
national revivals, to which the Church, incidentally, had contributed so much of its spiritual
force. If signs of spiritual awakening are becoming more frequent in the Orthodox world in re-
cent decades, they are linked with reasons outside the framework of this book — with the dawn
of new catastrophes, the last and most terrible of all being the collapse of the old world.

6. Russian Orthodoxy.
Russian Orthodoxy has too frequently been contrasted with another Orthodoxy — Greek or
Oriental, while Russian messianism has sometimes simply equated Orthodoxy with Russia, obli-
vious to its Byzantine origins and the “sleeping East.” The late S.L. Frank recently called this
national self-infatuation “the chronic disease of the Russian mind.”
45
But it would be ridiculous,
because of these extremes, the result of ideological disputes, to go to the opposite extreme and
simply deny the incomparable significance of Russia for the historical course of Orthodoxy in its
earthly forms and wanderings. Here, of course, one can only attempt a brief indication, a mere
enumeration of the basic landmarks of what must be called Russian Orthodoxy, despite the am-
biguity of the phrase.
Even so modest an attempt immediately runs up against almost insuperable difficulties.
The evaluation of Russia‟s historical development has long been a subject of disputes which
even today are not resolved. Whichever of the three basic stages in the dialectic of Russian histo-
ry one may turn to — the Kievan, Muscovite, or Petersburg period — there are current at least
two contradictory and mutually exclusive evaluations of each, arrived at on the basis of scientific
historical analysis. Yet the history of the Russian Church cannot be separated from the history of
Russia, as it cannot be separated from its Byzantine origins. Just as Orthodoxy is one of the ma-
jor factors in Russian history, so the destiny of Russia defined the fate of Russian Orthodoxy.

149
Even the simplest delineation of the development of the Church inevitably includes a definite
attitude toward Russia‟s past. No complete history of Russian religion yet exists, since no real
history of the Russian Church has yet been written. Too much is still simply unknown, unstu-
died. Some basic questions have only recently been posed. Finally, the agonizing problem of the
Church in Russia today and the importance of Russia itself in the destiny of the world makes the
whole subject infinitely complex. With the advent of Bolshevism not only was one period in
Russian Church history finished, but a whole era in the life of Orthodoxy itself came to an end.
In this light, the Russian chapter in the history of Orthodoxy inevitably takes on a universal sig-
nificance.

Conversion in Kiev — St. Vladimir.
The official history of the Orthodox Church in Russia begins with St. Vladimir, ruler of
Kiev, in the latter part of the tenth century. This does not mean that there had been no earlier
Christianity in Russia. We need only recall the importance in the Russian Christian memory of
St. Olga, his grandmother — “the dawning light that heralds the sun,” according to the chroni-
cles. Christianity before the baptism of the Rus (the name of the Scandinavian tribe that occupied
the Slavic territories around Kiev near the river Dnieper) was already so firmly established and
the bonds with Byzantium and Byzantinized Bulgaria so strong, that St. Vladimir‟s work can on-
ly be properly evaluated in the light of these factors. There is even a theory of the first baptism of
the Rus under Patriarch Photius in the ninth century which has a fair number of adherents in
Russian scholarship.
Essentially the work of St. Vladimir was not only a beginning but also the completion of
a rather long process, the victory of a certain tendency in the state‟s conception of itself. Howev-
er attached to paganism the prince may have been personally, as the chronicle relates, his long
hesitation in choosing a new religion, his missions to various countries, and his final choice of
Greek Christianity is evidence that the baptism of Russia, like that of Bulgaria before her, was
conceived as primarily a state matter and demonstrated Russia‟s arrival at maturity and readiness
to be included in the Christian tradition of the cultured world.
Like Bulgaria, Russia was obliged to choose between the old and the new Rome; we
know much more now than we did earlier about her links with Rome both before and after Vla-
dimir. The choice fell on Byzantine Orthodoxy. As with the Bulgars, Christianity in Russia was
imposed from above by state authority. Finally, as in Bulgaria, this Byzantine Orthodoxy became
established among the Russians in its Slavic aspect, that of Cyril and Methodius. All these fac-
tors were to define once for all the development of Russia and the Russian Church. We may
leave aside questions recently raised by Russian historians as to whether Greek or Bulgarian in-
fluence was first and fundamental; whether the Russian Church in its first years came under the
jurisdiction of Constantinople or Bulgaria; and to what extent the tragic fate of the first Bulgarian
kingdom in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries was reflected in the early Christian devel-
opment of Russia. No answer to these questions one way or another would change the basic fact
in the history of Russian Orthodoxy: its organic link with Byzantinism, that is, in its Slavic form.
In any case, starting with Yaroslav the Wise, the canonical dependence of the Russian Church
upon Constantinople cannot be doubted. That this dependence quite early became burdensome in
the mind of Church and state — possibly from the very beginning — we have evidence in the
attempts to install Russian metropolitans (Hilarion under Yaroslav in 1051 and Ephraim under
Iziaslav), and also in the disputes over the same question in connection with the installation of
Clement Smoliatich in 1147.

150

Quality of Kievan Christianity.
For a long time the Kievan period was considered no more than a prologue to the history
of the real flowering of the Russian Church, which was linked in Russian thinking with the Mus-
covite kingdom. Any spiritual or cultural achievements were denied it; it was dismissed as pos-
sessing only an elementary piety and moral casuistry and the schoolboy repetition of Byzantine
models. In recent years these old evaluations have been increasingly shown to be invalid, and the
Kievan period is more and more acknowledged to have been perhaps the purest and most versa-
tile of all periods of Russian religion. “Kievan Russia, like the golden days of childhood,” writes
Professor Fedotov, “has never gone out of the memory of the Russian people. Any who wish
may quench their spiritual thirst at the pure spring of its writings; they may find among its writ-
ers guides through the difficulties of the modern world. Kievan Christianity has the same signi-
ficance for Russia‟s religious way of thinking as Pushkin has for Russia‟s artistic consciousness:
the significance of a model, a golden mean, a royal road.”
46

The unquestioned success of Christianity in Kiev — that is to say, the “Russia” of that
period — as soon as it was imposed cannot be denied, whatever barriers there may have been. It
is apparent, first of all, in the saints of the period, who reveal how profoundly and purely the
evangelical ideal was accepted and the whole rich experience of Orthodox sanctity adopted there.
Among them were Princes Boris and Gleb, who were venerated as bearers of voluntary suffer-
ing; St. Theodosius of the Monastery of the Crypt (or caves) and his disciples, whose lives have
been preserved in the Book of the Crypt Fathers; St. Abraham of Smolensk and St. Cyril of Tu-
rov, the sainted bishops who fought paganism and struggled for the moral transformation of their
flock. Such souls bear witness to the rapid sprouting of evangelical seed; they also demonstrate
the versatility of early Russian sainthood and its unique interpretation of Byzantine classical tra-
ditions.
Basically it was of course the same Eastern Christian way to the kingdom of heaven, a
sanctity primarily monastic. Its sources lay in the Byzantine literature of saints‟ lives, partly
translated in Bulgaria in the Menologion, and partly in Kiev itself in the Prologue or the Books of
the Fathers (Pateriks) — one of which had been translated by the Apostle to the Slavs, Constan-
tine (Cyril) himself — and in the examples of the great holy men (podvizhniki), in the regulations
of St. Theodore the Studite, and elsewhere. But there were new features in it as well: the venera-
tion of the voluntary suffering of Boris and Gleb and the uniquely luminous asceticism of Theo-
dosius of the Caves, which was addressed to the world and particularly devoted to the “humi-
liated Christ” — that mood or striving which Professor Fedotov has perhaps overemphasized in
calling it Russian “kenoticism.”
Even during the first century in Kiev a spiritual community was created which left a deep
impression not only on the Kievan period but on all subsequent eras of Russian religious devel-
opment. This was the Kiev Crypt Monastery, begun by St. Antony in 1051 but really organized
by St. Theodosius, the true founder of all Russian monasticism. The Crypt Monastery imme-
diately became the example of pure, unadulterated Christianity, and the conscience of the young
Christian society. The life of Theodosius shows us his constant participation in the life of the
state — by preaching, exposure, and reminder — at a time when civil strife between the princes
was already beginning to infect it. This famous laura gave the Church as many as fifty bishops,

151
who disseminated its spirit, traditions, and regulations everywhere. It was a great center of cha-
ritable social action as well. The monastery was the standard of perfection, and a throng of saints
gave witness to the heavenly kingdom throughout the land, winning for it the title of “Holy Rus-
sia.”
Another proof of the success of Christianity must be seen in the genuine beginnings of
Christian statehood, whose incarnation was St. Vladimir, the baptizer of Russia. The chronicler
draws a clear distinction between his attitude toward his own authority before accepting Chris-
tianity and afterward, and depicts him as an affectionate prince, protector of the weak and poor,
concerned over the construction of hospitals and almshouses, struggling for justice, enlighten-
ment, and the ordering of the state. Another amazing example of a Christian prince is pictured by
Vladimir Monomakh in his Testament. Although it is bookish and follows Byzantine models,
this work is permeated with genuine conviction and expresses a personal experience, not merely
a literary one. “Vladimir‟s religious ethic lies between the Old and New Testaments,” Fedotov
writes. “Yet it is always illuminated by a few rays falling from the Gospel, and in rare, exalted
moments it dares to reflect Christ, the meek Lord, face to face.”
47
We must keep in mind this in-
spiration of conscience, reconciliation, mercy, and justice just at the dawn of the Russian state.
In the relations between Church and state we also see a harmony almost unprecedented in
the history of Orthodoxy; at the beginning of the Kievan period the Byzantine “harmony” oper-
ated almost openly through the influence of the Church, not the state. Although Vladimir had
been responsible for the choice of a religion, the Church in Kiev was not, in fact, dominated by
the state. His Ecclesiastical Regulations significantly broadened the sphere of the ecclesiastical
court by comparison to the Byzantine ones: all family matters, for example, were transferred to
it, so that the Church might carry out the regeneration of society more successfully. Still more
important, the rulers constantly accepted advice, guidance, and instruction from the Church, and
recognized it as the authority of conscience.
“In the dramatic and even tragic history of relations between the Christian Church and the
Christian state,” Fedotov continues, “the Kievan experience, in spite of its brevity and fragility,
may be regarded as one of the best Christian achievements.”
48
The history of Orthodoxy in Rus-
sia began with Christian perfectionism, a real “trans-valuation of values” in the light of evangeli-
cal truth.

Kievan Culture.
It is equally beyond doubt that there was a real culture in Kievan Russia; in comparison,
the Moscow period may even be regarded as a decline. Here, too, the initiative came from above,
from the prince and the hierarchy. Although Vladimir was illiterate, he built schools, and his
sons were examples of fully educated men, especially Yaroslav the Wise, in whose reign Kiev
became one of the centers of European culture. A whole workshop of translators labored in his
reign, and he selected children for the schools and himself read day and night, according to tradi-
tion. His son Sviatoslav of Chernigov had “storerooms full of books,” and the writings of another
son, Vladimir Monomakh, bear witness to the author‟s undoubted firsthand acquaintance with
Byzantine literature. In Kiev we may sense a deliberate effort to create a culture and to master
completely the Christian and Hellenic heritage.

47
Ibid., p. 260.
48
Ibid.

152
Basically, of course, this was a borrowed, translated culture, but original creative work
was running dry in Byzantium; moreover, this period of discipleship is inevitable in the history
of any culture. The important thing was that the Russians were good students. Golubinsky, him-
self a wholesale detractor of Russia‟s past,
49
has called Metropolitan Hilarion of Kiev “not a rhe-
torician of the worst period of Greek oratory but a real orator of the period when it flourished.”
The sermons of Cyril of Turov retain to this day their value as literature and not only as historical
documents. The early chronicles are filled not only with facts, but with a whole general outlook.
Their authors were “people with a definite and sensitive view of life, not at all naive simpletons.
In the development of the Russian chronicle we always sense a definite religious and historical
idea.”
50
Indeed, the era in which the Lay of Igor’s Campaign made its appearance can hardly be
termed barely literate.
A certain quintessence of Orthodox Byzantinism was conveyed to Russia and adopted
there; Russian thought entered into this tradition, and it became the basic source of Russian cul-
ture. The tradition was adopted not only passively but creatively as well. The first upsurge of
Russian national self-awareness that marks Hilarion‟s Word and Nestor‟s Chronicle is linked
with it. It is no accident that the prayer to God from the newly-consecrated people with which
Hilarion ends his Praise to Our Prince Vladimir was accepted even into Church usage. His ora-
tion, “On the Law given by Moses, and on the Grace and Truth which were Jesus Christ, and
how the Law departed while Grace and Truth filled all the earth and the faith spread to all lan-
guages and reached our Russian language, and praise to our Prince Vladimir, through whom we
were baptized, and a prayer to God from all our lands,” composed between 1030 and 1050, dur-
ing the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, expresses as it were the ecclesiastical and national confession
of newly-baptized Russia.
According to D. I. Cizevsky in his History of Old Russian Literature, this confession, like
all writing of the early Kievan period, is marked by the spirit of majesty and Christian optimism.
The Kievan ideologists were inspired by their concept of the unity of Russia and the growth of
its idea of statehood, which was beginning in glory. This inspiration was rooted deep in the expe-
rience of baptism, in Russia‟s acceptance of “grace and truth.” The Good News came to the Rus-
sians at the eleventh hour, but in the person of their prince, Vladimir, they were not diminished
in the sight of other Christian peoples. In such Christian hope, in their awareness that God had
called them, the Russian sense of nationhood arose, and in the future, at its highest peaks would
use this as a standard of measurement and judgment.

Shallows and Hidden Darkness.
Of course one must not exaggerate either the success of Kievan Christianity or the depth
of the Christianization that had taken place. It remained the sphere of the elite, a group of new-
born ecclesiastical and state intellectuals. Certain writings, such as The Questions of Kirik for
example, show an extremely elementary understanding of the nature of Christianity. One must
note at once that Russia had accepted a ready-made Orthodoxy, at a time when conservative atti-
tudes, an effort to refer everything to the past (the perfected model), and a fear of infringing on
any of the ancient traditions were expressed with increasing strength in Byzantium itself. Russian

49
E.E. Golubinsky, author of a History of the Russian Church (1880-81), famous for its violently
critical approach to Kievan Christianity.
50
G. Florovsky, The Ways of Russian Theology (in Russian, Paris, 1937), page 7.

153
psychology was from the first marked by this ritualism and by a somewhat hypertrophied, nar-
rowly liturgical piety.
But it is much more important to note also that here paganism was preserved under Chris-
tian cover — a “dual faith,” as yet insufficiently studied but undoubtedly one of the keys to Rus-
sian religious psychology. Slavic paganism did not offer fanatical opposition to Christianity. It
lacked organization, literature, or any developed cult; but this only made it especially vital and
dangerous. This was “soft” paganism, based on nature and profoundly bound to natural life.
Christianity was long a foreign religion — even doubly foreign, being Greek and coming from
the prince as well, which meant its support by the Varangian druzhina, the ruling clique in Rus-
sia. To receive it required education; it was bookish by its very nature. Its external elements —
the divine service, the ritual — were easily accepted; it charmed the people and won their hearts;
but there was the danger that they would not see, or even try to see, the meaning or Logos behind
these externals, without which the Christian rite would in fact become pagan in becoming an end
in itself. The soul of the people continued to feed upon the old natural religious experiences and
images. “Paganism did not die and was not overpowered immediately,” Father Florovsky dec-
lares.
In the murky depths of the popular subconsciousness, as in some historical underground,
its own concealed life went on, now with double meaning and dual faith . . . The borrowed By-
zantine Christian culture did not immediately become generally accepted, but for a long time it
was the property and treasure of a literate or cultural minority . . . We must remember, therefore,
that the history of this “daytime” Christian culture certainly does not exhaust the fullness of Rus-
sia‟s spiritual destiny . . . One can see that the sickliness of the Old Russian development was
due first of all to the fact that the “nighttime” imagination was too long and too stubbornly con-
cealed, avoiding intellectual testing, verification, and refinement.
51

Later, feeling, imagination, and tenderness would be proclaimed as the basic points of
distinction between Russian and Greek Christianity, the latter being considered calculating and
cold. But it would be more correct to see that the stubborn opposition of the “Russian soul to the
Logos was one of the deepest reasons for many of the fateful crises in the course of Russian his-
tory.

Tatar Conquest Beginning of Moscow Kingdom.
With the Tatar conquest of Russia (1237-40) the Kievan period in Russian history came
to an end. This catastrophe affected not only the state; the Mongol yoke began a new stage in the
development of the Church as well, a complex period not easily susceptible of any single genera-
lization or characterization.
The Tatar invasion did not interrupt Church tradition or halt the theological or spiritual
development that had already begun. But relations between the Church and state authority gradu-
ally changed. If in Kiev harmony between the Grand Prince and the Church authorities had
usually prevailed, with the collapse of the central power and the multiplication of small princi-
palities, it became easier to stifle the voice of the Church. In 1157 Prince Andrew Bogoliubsky
drove Bishop Nestor out of Rostov, and Prince Sviatoslav of Chernigov expelled Bishop Antony
the Greek in 1168. Monomakh‟s brother, Rostislav, killed the monk Gregory for denouncing
him, and Grand Prince Sviatopolk killed the abbot of the Crypt Monastery for the same reason.

51
Ibid., pp. 2-3.

154
On the whole, however, the voice of the Church continued to be heard in disputes between the
princes and had a good influence upon them. With the Tatar rule the center of governmental au-
thority shifted far to the north, to the region of Suzdal (northeast of Moscow, which was then the
estate of the prince of Suzdal), and the center of the metropolitan naturally followed.
The thirteenth century marked the flourishing of the northeastern cities of Vladimir and
Suzdal, but as regards government this was a transitional period. In the fourteenth century the
“gathering of the Russian land” around Moscow began, and a decisive factor in the process was
the alliance of the Church — specifically its hierarchical center — with Moscow. A new shift of
the metropolitan see naturally followed, although the metropolitan long retained the title “of
Kiev” which he had kept throughout the Suzdal period. The head of the Church could no longer
lead an almost nomadic life, as had the first metropolitans of the Tatar regime, Cyril and Maxim.
The resettlement of Metropolitan Peter and his successors in Moscow resulted from a natural de-
sire to maintain the unity of the country and to unite the ecclesiastical center with elements in the
state that, even under Turkish rule, were striving for the consolidation and unity of Russia. But in
uniting its fate with a single policy, which it supported in every way, the Church itself impercept-
ibly fell under the sway of the state; and it ceased to be the conscience of the state, gradually be-
coming a prop and almost an instrument of Muscovite imperialism.
We know by what dubious means Moscow achieved its hegemony in Russia. The blood
of Michael of Tver, tortured by the Horde in 1319 after being slandered by Yuri of Moscow, was
shed at almost the same time as Metropolitan Peter of Moscow was blessing the beginning of
that city‟s historic rise to power. In addition, the transfer of the metropolitan to Moscow caused
dissatisfaction in southwest Russia, and the Church‟s obvious alliance with Moscow resulted in a
large number of disputes, bribery from Constantinople, and competition between metropolitans,
which gradually weakened the moral authority of the metropolitan who had stood so high in
Kiev. While St. Peter, Theognost, and St. Alexei — the first metropolitans of Moscow — still
maintained this authority, after them we see its gradual effacement as compared to that of the
Grand Prince.
Dimitri Donskoi, who was the first to defeat the Tatars and to weaken their grip on Rus-
sia, simply selected persons acceptable to himself for positions of Church authority. A characte-
ristic example was his support of Archimandrite Mityai, imprisoning Bishop Dionisi for refusing
to ask the blessing of that priest, who had not yet been consecrated bishop. When Metropolitan
Cyprian arrived in Moscow from Kiev on the instructions of the patriarch of Constantinople,
who wished to restore ecclesiastical unity in Russia, Dimitri simply drove him out, as he drove
out Pimen after him, who had managed by bribery to be consecrated in Constantinople.
In the Kievan period and at the beginning of the north Russian period the Church had
been independent of the state.
Therefore it could demand of those bearing the princely authority submission to certain
principles of idealism in their personal as well as their political lives: faithfulness to their agree-
ments, peacefulness, and justice. St. Theodosius had fearlessly called the prince a usurper, and
Metropolitan Nikifor could declare to the princes: “We are installed by God to keep you from
bloodshed.” This freedom of the Church was possible primarily because the Russian Church was
not yet national or “autocephalous,” but acknowledged that it was part of the Greek Church. Its
supreme hierarch lived in Constantinople, which was inaccessible to the encroachments of the
local princes. Even Andrew Bogoliubsky submitted to the ecumenical patriarch.
52

52
Fedotov, op. cit., pp. 400-403.

155
For all its participation in state affairs, the hierarchy continued to recognize that it
represented another, higher whole, the Church Universal, and this made its patriotic contribu-
tions weightier and more independent. One sees this awareness even in the first Russian pri-
mates. But the stronger Moscow and the power of the Moscow princes became, the weaker be-
came the authority of the metropolitan of Moscow. At a local council held in 1459, the Russian
bishops solemnly pledged not to withdraw the metropolitan see from Moscow.
There is no doubt that the nationalization of the Russian Church and its gradual liberation
from Constantinople was inevitable. The link had lost its value in the fifteenth century; in impo-
verished and ruined Byzantium, bribes and deception were frequently stronger than canonical
and universal consciousness. Still one must note this narrowing of the horizon of the Russian
Church, its gradual subordination to governmental rationale, and its transformation into an “as-
pect” of the life of the state.
The change in relations between Church and state is connected with the terrible moral
collapse that followed upon the Mongol domination. This experience in slavery inevitably
brought forth its fruit. The Russian character was completely coarsened and poisoned by “Tatar-
ism.”
The princes themselves had to go to the Horde with declarations of their slavish submis-
sion and constantly tremble before the might of the Despot and the constant denunciations of
spies, even among their own brother princes . . . For the people this school of slavery was even
more oppressive; they had to bow down before every passing Tatar, do all that he asked, and get
rid of him by deceit and bows . . . Duplicity, slyness, prostration, base displays of the instinct of
self-preservation, became the virtues of the era, preached even by the morality of the chroni-
cles.
53

“Tatarism” — lack of principle and a repulsive combination of prostration before the
strong with oppression of everything weak — unfortunately marked the growth of Moscow and
the Muscovite culture from the very beginning, and it is incomprehensible, in view of such mon-
strous aberrations of religious nationalism, why the Moscow period captivated the minds of Rus-
sian Churchmen for so long and became for them the standard of Holy Russia.

Early Russian Monasticism — St. Sergius.
While the general picture of the moral condition of society in the period of the Tatar yoke
is undoubtedly a gloomy one, and the gloom darkened still further with the passing years, the
unquestioned blossoming of Russian acts of holiness and sainthood gleams against this back-
ground. The ties were not broken with the East or with Mt. Athos, where a revival and rebirth of
spiritual life had come with the movement of the Hesychasts in the fourteenth century. Metropol-
itan Cyprian, for example, a Serb by origin and a monk of Athos who had zealously pursued li-
turgical reform in Russia, was a confirmed Palamite. At Athos whole settlements of Russian
monks were created who continued the work of translation. Through them speculative literature
reached Russia: the works of Basil the Great, Isaac the Syrian, Maxim the Confessor, and Sime-
on the New Theologian. Russia was not yet cut off from its blood relations with universal Ortho-
doxy. This uninterrupted spiritual tradition appeared most clearly in Russian monasticism, of
which the fourteenth century was the golden age. This was the time of St. Sergius of Radonezh

156
and of all that northern Russian Thebaid — the series of monasteries connected with him —
which would remain the true heart of Russian Orthodoxy forever.
With St. Sergius (1320-92) Orthodox saintliness was revived in all its brilliance. From his
withdrawal into the desert through physical asceticism, self-crucifixion, and meekness, to the last
rays of the light of Mt. Tabor and the partaking of the kingdom of heaven, Sergius recapitulated
the journeys of all the great witnesses to Orthodoxy from the first centuries. The nationalist
would emphasize the support he gave Prince Dimitri Donskoi for his attempt to liberate Russia
from the Tatars. Sociologists and economists insist upon the colonizing and enlightening signi-
ficance of the immense network of monasteries founded by his disciples and successors; yet
these are of course not the most important thing about him — rather, the absolutism of his Chris-
tianity, the image of the complete transformation of man by the Holy Spirit and his aspiration to
“life in God.”
This made St. Sergius the center of Russian Orthodoxy in the dark years of her history
and brought many roads to the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius. All that was genuine and vital in
the Russian Church at that time was linked in one way or the other with St. Sergius. He himself
wrote nothing, yet nothing expresses so convincingly and forcefully his influence and the content
of the doctrine he incarnated than the icons painted by St. Andrei Rublev, discovered rather re-
cently after centuries of oblivion. His “Trinity” is a most perfect work of religious art, an actual
“meditation in color.” In general, Russian religious experience was expressed and incarnated in
those ages less in verbal, theological work than in church architecture and the icon. These bear
witness with “a sort of material authenticity to the complexity and genuine refinement of ancient
Russian religious experience and to the creative power of the Russian spirit.”
54

The monastery of St. Sergius at Radonezh, near Moscow, soon became the seedplot of
monasticism for all northern Russia. Within a century and a half almost one hundred and eighty
monasteries were created, providing spiritual formation for a great number of saints. The monas-
tery became the center of spiritual life for the whole society in a period of darkness and barbar-
ism: an extreme of national life in which the people found consolation, instruction, and aid —
and, most important, became convinced of the reality of absolute values because they had come
into contact with holiness.
As we study the religious life of that time, we see first of all a polarization, a psychologi-
cal contradiction between the sinful world and the monastery. This is also true of the religious
life. There is the crude faith of the illiterate or semiliterate “white” clergy, who were so exploited
by the bishops that in 1435, in Pskov, the clergy and the people attacked the bishop‟s emissaries.
There is superstition, drunkenness, and debauchery; Metropolitan Jonah in a letter to the citizens
of Viatich reproves the inhabitants because some of them took wives five, seven, or even ten
times, and Yuri of Smolensk brutally killed Princess Juliana Viazemsky because she refused to
satisfy his passion. Yet amid all this darkness and decay there was the pure air of the monastery,
evidence of the possibility of repentance, renewal, and purification. The monastery is not the
crown of the Christian world, but on the contrary, its inner judgment seat and accuser, the light
shining in the darkness. This must be understood for a comprehension of the origins of the “Rus-
sian soul.” In the midst of its degradation it stretches toward this limitless brightness; it contains
the tragic discord between the vision of spiritual beauty and purity expressed in monasticism and
the sense of the hopeless sinfulness of life. Those who see a wholeness in the Russian religious

54
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 1.

157
mind of these ages are deeply mistaken, for just then, in the centuries after the Tatar invasion, the
dualism which would mark its future course began to enter into it.

Consolidation of Russian Lands under Moscow.
In the middle of the fifteenth century the whole Russian land consisted of two great state
groups of lands: the eastern, under the administration of the Muscovite autocrats, and the west-
ern, under the authority of the Lithuanian-Polish government. The Russian Church was also di-
vided into two large provinces, the Muscovite and the Kievan. The Muscovite metropolitan, un-
der the protection of the state, flourished within its borders, was adorned with outward splendor,
and revealed from within a remarkable movement of enlightenment. The state, having recovered
from misfortunes within and without, began an effort to assimilate the fruits of Western civiliza-
tion. By the end of the sixteenth century the Church had reached the point of becoming an inde-
pendent patriarchate.
55

So runs an official history at the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, this intro-
duction is in sharp contradiction to the subsequent expositions, from which it is highly apparent
that “beneath a pious exterior an Asiatic moral coarseness was revealed.” Actually the Muscovite
period in Russian Church history is marked by profound spiritual upheavals and is far from
showing the organic unity people have so longed to find in it.
Moscow‟s political triumph in consolidating the country coincided with the first great
crisis in the thought of the Russian Church and is deeply marked by it. This was the temptation
of the union of Florence and the catastrophe of the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In the Russian
mind both events were interpreted as apocalyptic signs and as a terrible break in the history of
Orthodoxy. Their Greek teachers and mentors were revealed as traitors to Orthodoxy; perhaps
even for this reason subjected by Providence to the Turkish yoke. From the very start the Russian
mind, sensitive to grand historical-philosophical themes, had inevitably pondered these signs and
drawn new conclusions from them.
True, the way had been prepared. Back in the fourteenth century a dispute had begun be-
tween Moscow and Constantinople, and Moscow was gradually liberated from the Byzantine
theory of a single empire. This theory, which Greek missionaries had brought into Russia from
the very first days of Russian Christianity and which in its essence had been accepted uncondi-
tionally at the time, had been shaken by the Greeks themselves — by their “illegal and venal way
of dealing with the Russian Church under Metropolitan Alexei, the installation of Cyprian in his
place, and especially by the arbitrary installation after his death of Abbot Pimen, who caused
great harm to the Church.”
56

Independence from Byzantium — Messianic Theocracy.
Dependence of the Russian Church on Byzantium — weakened, and corrupted by its
weakness — became less and less justified by the facts and more and more oppressive. Even at
the beginning of the fifteenth century the Grand Prince Vasili Dmitrievich of Moscow was ob-
liged to listen to lessons on Byzantine theocratic theory, an example of which we find in an epis-
tle of Antony, the patriarch of Constantinople, to the prince.

158
The Holy Emperor occupies a high place in the Church; he is not the same as other local
princes and lords. The Emperors in the beginning established and maintained piety throughout
the universe; they summoned the ecumenical councils; by their laws they established the obser-
vance of what the divine and sacred laws say of right dogmas and the proper ordering of Chris-
tian life, and they took many measures against heresy. And if with God‟s permission pagans
have surrounded the possessions and lands of the Emperor, still until this day he is anointed by
the great myrrh according the same ceremony and with the same prayers, and is crowned Empe-
ror of all Christians. In any place, wherever Christians may be, the name of the Emperor is men-
tioned by all patriarchs, metropolitans and bishops, and no other princes or local rulers have this
advantage . . . It is impossible for Christians to have the Church but not to have the Emperor. For
Empire and Church are in close union and it is impossible to divide them from each other.
We have already learned how profoundly this theory was reflected in the history of the
southern Slavic empires, literally bewitched by the theocratic dream. Law-abiding Russia ac-
cepted it unconditionally for centuries, although it sometimes attempted to weaken its ecclesias-
tical dependence on Constantinople.
One must add to this that — under the influence of gloomy reality, Mongol slavery, and
general ruin — eschatological expectations generally increased in Russia toward the end of the
fourteenth century. For example, it was said in Moscow of the work of St. Stephen of Perm, who
translated Christian literature for his flock: “Before there was no literacy in Perm — why invent
it now, after seven thousand years, a hundred and twenty years before the end?” Obviously the
fall of the empire, the betrayal by the Greeks, and in particular the place of Moscow in all these
events had acquired a new significance. Before this period Byzantium had been the standard of
Orthodoxy; the Russians could tranquilly build churches and monasteries, pray to God, and de-
velop their state, for behind it all stood the guarantee of universal Byzantine Orthodoxy and its
infallible authority. But now the standard disappeared and the authority came crashing down. “At
the holy place, in what has been the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Constantinople, there is
now abomination and desolation.”
It was now beyond doubt that Byzantium‟s holy mission had passed to Moscow and that
the theocratic dream of the East had found a new incarnation. Simeon, a priest-monk of Suzdal
and an eyewitness to the fall of the Greeks at Florence, had written, “Orthodoxy is at its best in
Russia.” And he proclaimed the Prince of Moscow a “reverent, Christ-loving, and pious, true Or-
thodox Grand Prince, the white Tsar of all Russia.” The final transfer of metropolitan power into
Russian hands occurred in 1448, when St. Jonah was elected by a council of Russian bishops and
a decree sent to Greece proclaiming the de facto independence of the Russian Church from the
patriarch of Constantinople. While historically inevitable, this independence became in fact the
basis of the final subordination of the Church to the Russian state and to its national and political
calculations.

It must be recognized that this birth of Russian theocracy . . .passed for a long time through the
crucible of sufferings and struggles of conscience within the Church. It was not easy to cross out
the historical authority of the Greeks. It was far more difficult to overcome the canonical authori-
ty of the Mother Church . . . The history of the scrupulous sufferings of Russia‟s canonical con-
science, over the independent installation of Metropolitan Jonah (1448), which amounted to au-
tocephaly, presents one of the most outstanding pieces of evidence as to Russia‟s canonical good
faith. Grand Prince Vasili Vasilievich was tormented just as earnestly by the extremely crucial
problem which unexpectedly fell upon him: should he take up the defense of Orthodoxy, which

159
had faltered in its very shrine at Constantinople [because of the surrender of the Greeks to the
papacy at Florence in 1439] and threatened in this way to disappear throughout the world?
57

Russian religious messianism was indeed born in eschatological tension — in confusion
and alarm. But external events justified it. In 1453 Constantinople fell. In 1472, Ivan III entered
into matrimony with the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, and the two-headed eagle of the
empire legitimately soared over Moscow. Finally, 1480 signalized the final liberation from the
Tatars. Once more the Byzantine idea of a migrating empire was confirmed. Old Rome had wa-
vered in its orthodoxy, and the empire had passed to the new Rome. Had not the time arrived for
a new shift, to Moscow? So the theory of Moscow as the third Rome was conceived, its propo-
nent being Philotheus, the teaching elder of the Lazarus Monastery in Pskov, an old city south-
west of Novgorod and the future St. Petersburg. According to his letters to the Grand Princes Ba-
sil III and Ivan IV in Moscow, the Orthodox Church, like the wife in the Apocalypse, had first
run from old to new Rome, “but found no peace there because of the union with the Latins at the
Eighth Council. Then the Church of Constantinople fell, and the empire fled again to a third
Rome, which is in New Great Russia . . . All Christian empires bow down to you alone: for two
Romes are fallen, but the third stands fast; a fourth there cannot be; your Christian kingdom shall
not be given to another . . . You alone are Emperor over all Christians under the sun.”

Muscovite Domination of the Church.
Here lay the true tragedy of the Russian Church, for this victory of the theocratic dream,
this upsurge of national and religious consciousness, turned into a triumph for the Moscow auto-
cracy and contained not only Byzantine but Asian — Tatar — features as well.
The Tatar element had possessed the soul of Russia, not outwardly but from within, pene-
trating its flesh and blood. This spiritual Mongol conquest coincided with the political defeat of
the Horde. In the fifteenth century thousands of baptized and unbaptized Tatars entered the ser-
vice of the Prince of Moscow, merging with the ranks of men in service, the future nobility, in-
fecting it with their Eastern concepts and the way of life of the steppe . . . The two centuries of
the Tatar yoke did not yet mark the end of Russian freedom. Freedom perished only after the li-
beration from the Tatars . . .
58

We see this death of freedom first of all in the Church. The theocratic empire recognizes
only one unlimited authority, the authority of the emperor; beside it the image of metropolitan or
patriarch fades away and the voice of the Church grows weaker. In 1522, at the order of Basil III,
Metropolitan Varlaam was removed and secluded in a monastery. The disgraced boyar Beklemi-
shev wrote of his successor Daniel, “An instructive word [to the Grand Prince] was never heard
from him and he does not plead on behalf of anyone; previously, metropolitans had sat in their
seats in their robes and had pleaded to the ruler on behalf of all men.” The weakness of the
Church was expressed particularly in the matter of the divorce of the Grand Prince from his bar-
ren wife Solomonia. This illegitimate divorce was opposed by Maxim the Greek and the Eastern
hierarchs who sent their opinions. But Daniel, obeying the prince, made Solomonia a nun by
force and married the prince to Elena Glinski, the mother of Ivan the Terrible.
The tragedy of Muscovite Orthodoxy reached its final limit under Ivan, whose reign
completed the development of Russian theocracy. In 1547 he was anointed Grand Prince — after
the example, he claimed, of the Greek emperors and his ancestor Vladimir Monomakh — and

160
became the first born tsar, “by God‟s mercy.” In 1557 he received confirmation of this rank from
the Eastern hierarchs. His reign began with the memorable, promising introduction in which the
Church again appeared to have a voice, the voice of conscience, the call to Christian “construc-
tion.” This was the period of Metropolitan Makari and the Council of the Hundred Chapters, the
period when Russian Orthodoxy reached perfection in its own national self-affirmation, although
its “well-being” was mostly only external. But even this was broken off when a terrible reaction
set in in the decade of the 1560‟s, covering the whole state with the malevolent shadow of the
oprichnina.
59
The victory of autocracy was stained with the martyr‟s blood of Metropolitan Phi-
lip (1569); his accusation against Ivan the Terrible was the last general open accusation against
the empire by the Church. “I am a stranger upon the earth and am ready to suffer for the truth.
Where is my faith if I am silent?”
After him the Church kept silent for a long time. His successors, Cyril and Antony, were
mute witnesses to Ivan‟s acts, “Where are the faces of the prophets, who could accuse the kings
of injustice? Where is Ambrose, who restrained Theodosius? Where is John Chrysostom, who
exposed the avaricious Empress? Who defends his offended brother?” To Kurbsky‟s questions
60

the Russian Church had no answer. Under the weak Tsar Theodore, Metropolitan Dionisi was
cloistered for daring to bring accusations against the powerful Godunov; it is true that he was
criticized not only for an ecclesiastical matter but for a political alliance with his rival Shuisky as
well. But when the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah, solemnly elevated Metropolitan Job to
the patriarchate on January 26, 1589, and two years later a decree reached Moscow of the estab-
lishment of a patriarchate in Russia, the Russian Church was no longer even in captivity to the
state. Together they composed a single united world, forged together in a sacral way of life.
Outwardly, as has already been said, Russian Orthodoxy reached its peak, its imperial
self-affirmation, in the Moscow empire. It was expressed first of all in the centralization not only
of ecclesiastical life but of the tradition of the Russian Church itself as well. The subjugation of
the appanages to Moscow was accompanied by the unprecedented subjugation of all local spiri-
tual traditions to the ecclesiastical center in Moscow. Moscow was to be the center of Russian
holiness, and relics from glorious ancient cities were brought there, often by force. The icon of
the Savior from Novgorod, the icon of the Annunciation from Ustiug, the Crypt icon from Pskov,
the icon of the Mother of God from Vladimir, and the relics of Prince Michael and his boyar
Theodore from Chernigov were all brought to the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Along with this appeared a frequently extreme pettiness of local nationalism: the first
Muscovite bishop in Novgorod, Sergius, refused to venerate the relics of his Novgorodian prede-
cessor, St. Moses; Ivan III, after visiting the Khutyn Monastery, said that the Muscovite relics
should be given precedence over those of the local saints.
The chief inspiration and executor of this centralization was Metropolitan Makari. His
Menologion contained “all the books, combined, which had been found in the Russian lands”:
the lives of the saints, arranged according to the days on which they are commemorated; the
words used in their celebrations; many of their works; whole books of Holy Scripture and inter-
pretations of them. The gathering of all this literary treasure “by many names and many scribes”
lasted almost twenty years. Makari is also credited with compiling the Book of Degrees, an ex-
tensive collection of information on Russian history.

59
The bodyguard of Ivan the Terrible, chief executors of his cruelties.
60
Prince Kurbsky (1528-83), one of the most enlightened men in Muscovy, deserted to Lithua-
nia. He was the author of famous epistles to Ivan the Terrible.

161
Another document of the period which reflected the final crystallization of Russian Or-
thodoxy was the Domostroi (Home-Builder) of the priest Sylvester, a contemporary and col-
league of Makari. Florovsky calls it “a didactic book, not a descriptive one, and it outlines a
theoretical ideal but does not describe daily reality.” However, it was clearly conceived out of
desire to fix everything, even to the smallest details of domestic life, in a definitive system and
actually to convert the whole of life into a ritual. In this rite, along with an unquestionably Chris-
tian attitude and asceticism, Asiatic crudeness also breaks out: beatings, for example, become
one of the main methods of maintaining Christian life in all its splendor, and also of education.
Professor Fedotov writes of this period:
The outlook of the Russian had become extremely simplified. Even in comparison to the
Middle Ages the Muscovite was primitive. He did not reason but accepted on faith certain dog-
mas which sustained his moral and public life. But even in his religion there was something
which was more important than dogma. Ritual, periodic repetition of certain gestures, prostra-
tions, and verbal formulas, binds living life together and prevents it from slipping away into
chaos, imparting to it even the beauty of formalized existence. For the Muscovite, like all Rus-
sians, did not lack an esthetic sense, only now it became oppressive. Beauty became splendor,
and fatness was the ideal of feminine beauty. Christianity, when the mystical tendencies of the
Trans-Volgans were rooted out, was transformed increasingly into a religion of holy matter. It
was ritualism, but a ritualism which was terribly demanding and morally effective. In his ritual,
like the Jew in the Law, the Muscovite found support for his feat of sacrifice.
61

Because the Domostroi is not a description but an ideology, its very appearance may be
regarded as a sign of the profound spiritual illness, the genuine crisis, concealed under the out-
ward splendor and harmony of Church life in Moscow.

Inner Crisis and Turmoil.
The numerous personal defects of Church members — the priesthood, the monks, and
laymen — are attested by the Council of the Hundred Chapters, called by Ivan the Terrible.
Moreover, in addition to the decline of education, excessive ritualism, remnants of paganism,
and so forth, one cannot ignore the straying or irregularities of thought and disturbances within
the mind of the Church. Such a straying was evident even in the fourteenth century in the Novgo-
rodian heresy of the Strigolniks, a rationalistic and anticlerical movement. Still more symptomat-
ic in the fifteenth century was the heresy of the Judaizers, a peculiar magical combination of
freethinking and dark astrological interests. Afterward began the disputes of the Josephites, fol-
lowers of Joseph of Volotsk, and the Trans-Volgans,
62
monks of the Trans-Volga hermitages,
whose chief leader later became known as St. Nil Sorsky. Outwardly this was a controversy over
monastery possessions, the right of the monks to own “villages” — to be a propertied class with-
in the state; and also about the execution of heretics.
Two distinct conceptions of the Christian ideal were, in fact, coming into conflict. In his
book, The Ways of Russian Theology, Father Florovsky writes in this connection of the conflict
of “two truths” and defines the truth of Joseph of Volotsk as the “truth of social service.” Joseph
himself cannot be considered acquisitive.

61
Fedotov, “Russia and Freedom,” p. 151.
62
Name given to the followers of Abbot Nilus of Sora, who opposed Abbot Joseph on the ques-
tion of monastic properties.

162
He can in no way be accused of indifference or inattention to his neighbor. He was a
great benefactor, a “helpless fellow-sufferer,” and he defended the monastic villages out of phi-
lanthropic and social motives alone. Joseph included the Tsar himself in the same system of
“God‟s obligation,” the Tsar too is subject to the law, and he holds his power only within the
limits of God‟s law and commandments. One should not submit to an unjust or “obstinate” Tsar.
Yet whatever Joseph‟s basic truth may have been, his system is fitted too neatly into the
totalitarian nature of the Muscovite state and corresponded too obviously to its utilitarian psy-
chology. From this point of view, the defeat of the Trans-Volgan movement, despite the political
motives that complicated all these disputes, meant suppression of the spiritual freedom of the
Church and of any recognition of its incompatibility with service exclusively to the state or so-
ciety. The Trans-Volgans lived by the original spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy, “by the process
of the spiritual and moral constitution of the Christian personality.” Once again, in this expe-
rience of genuine spiritual freedom, social conscience also was aroused and entered a protest
against the religious use of force — against Moscow‟s all-devouring system of obligation and the
subordination of human personality to the “construction” of it.

Conservatism and Ritualism.
Behind all these disputes and irregularities one may perceive very clearly the gradual
breaking off of official Russian Orthodoxy from the creative traditions of its universal past. Libe-
ration from canonical dependence upon the Greeks came to mean distrust of everything Greek in
general and the opposition of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian antiquity to Greek Orthodoxy.
This was the meaning behind the famous Council of the Hundred Chapters of 1551, summoned
on the initiative of Ivan the Terrible but expressing the attitudes of Makari and Sylvester in par-
ticular. The council was to cure the scandalous defects in ecclesiastical society; Ivan‟s plan was
apparently a profound and many-sided reform. Yet it is characteristic that neither Ivan nor the
participants in the council conceived of these corrections as a self-examination in terms of the
sure criteria of the universal tradition of the Church, or the creative renewal of them under new
conditions. Ivan was inspired by the West and did not like the “Greek faith.” The council re-
sponded to his “liberal” questions with the experience of olden times — what had prevailed un-
der their ancestors — and not by affirming the truth. Even the correction of Church books, a
problem that had already arisen even then, was a complete failure, reflecting the lack of any ge-
nuine perspective in the thinking of the pillars of Russian Orthodoxy. The semiliterate, unjusti-
fied translations accepted, and the helplessness in defining criteria, in themselves sowed the poi-
son of schism.
For the first time, here, we see very clearly the distrust of thought and creativity. Salva-
tion lay only in the strict preservation of antiquity; this helpless conservatism reveals all the tra-
gedy and depth of Moscow‟s break with living Orthodox culture. The road to salvation became
observance of regulations and the performance of ritual. Because people did not understand it,
the ritual became an end in itself, so that even obvious mistakes in the text were inviolable be-
cause hallowed by antiquity — it would be dangerous to the soul to correct them.
Finally there developed a simple fear of books and knowledge. The teachers themselves,
according to Kurbsky, “would lure away boys who were diligent and wished to gain knowledge
of the Scriptures, saying: „Do not read many books,‟ and would point to one who has lost his
mind, saying, he wandered astray in books and fell into heresy.” The printing press in Moscow
was closed down and the first Russian printers, Ivan Fedorov and Peter Timofeev, were accused
of heresy; then “because of the growing hatred of many leaders and priests and teachers,” they

163
left for southern Russia. The tsar himself finally intervened on behalf of book publishing and
reopened the printing press in 1568.
Only in the light of this break in the creative theological tradition can we understand all
the fateful significance of the first “encounter with the West,” which coincided with the triumph
of the Moscow kingdom. It was fateful because it was not a free encounter or argument; it was a
case of either replacing Byzantinism by Western influence or indiscriminately rejecting every-
thing Western, as the plague. Russia‟s national self-assertion had been roused in opposition to
Byzantium, but the latter‟s universal Orthodox heritage had also been rejected.

Western Leanings and Resistance to Them.
Beginning with Ivan III, a real fascination with the West made its appearance in court
circles. His marriage to Sophia Paleologos, which made Moscow officially the heir of Byzan-
tium, actually opened the door to the Italian Renaissance and to complex and contradictory
Western influences. His successor Basil III was also a Westernizer, whose doctor, Nikolai Nem-
chin, even conducted a correspondence concerning the union of the churches. It is characteristic
that when a new translation of the Bible into Church Slavonic was begun in Novgorod under the
enlightened Metropolitan Gennadi, the deciding textual influence was not the Greek text (which
was not consulted at all) but the Latin Vulgate. In general, “under Gennadi a whole movement of
Latin style can be observed in Novgorod.” It is just as evident in the case of Deacon Viskovaty,
who did not accept the new style of the Moscow icons, which were beginning to show the influ-
ence of Western models and the predominance of allegory over the symbolic, hieratic style of the
Byzantine and Old Russian canon. Particularly tragic was the condemnation of St. Maxim the
Greek in 1521. Maxim himself had spent a long time in the West and had undergone a long spiri-
tual development. But in Russia he defended a purely patristic tradition and the creative work of
the Christian East.
It was not the encounter with Europe that was so fateful, but the unfree conditions of it.
Moscow had defended herself from Byzantium by her own ancient past; she used the same in-
strument to oppose the West as well. To the fascination with the West on the upper levels, the
Church responded with anathemas, not against Western heresies but against the West itself,
simply because it was the West.
By confusing the existing with the nonexistent, the ritualistic religious outlook was ex-
tended to ordinary objects and customs of everyday life as well: everything native and Russian
seemed Orthodox and everything alien was heretical and “heathen.” Russians wore beards, and
the beard became an essential symbol of being Orthodox, while the clean-shaven face was a sign
of belonging to the Latin heresy. The Council of the Hundred Chapters forbade the celebration of
funeral services for those without beards, as well as the offering of communion bread or candles
on his behalf; he should be counted with the unbelievers.
Under such psychological conditions free encounter or discussion were impossible. These
two extremes in Russia‟s attitude toward the West, mortal fear or blind worship, persisted for a
long time. When a few young men were sent abroad under Godunov for study, they did not re-
turn home but remained in the West and betrayed their Orthodoxy.

True Holiness.
As in ossified Byzantium in its later years, so in the Moscow kingdom, too, holiness —
the breath of the Spirit, which breathes where it wills — gradually withdrew to the forests, the
outskirts, the periphery. This was the era of the saints of the north, who achieved inner freedom

164
in their struggle against wild and merciless nature: St. Alexander of Svir, Korneli of Komel, Ma-
kari of Koliazin, Savvati, Zosima, German of Solovetsk, Antony of Sii, and Nil of Stolbensk.
The list could be prolonged. Sanctity was not scarce, and “Holy Russia” continued to grow
alongside the “great power”; but they must not be confused.
Nor was the real thirst for sanctity dying out among the people. Perhaps just at this time,
or very near it, when the moral level was falling and growing coarser, and outward piety and
splendor were becoming divorced from their moral and theological inspiration, the only percept-
ible ideal within the whole of society became that of absolute holiness. The outward appearance
of Christianity could be maintained, preserved, and fixed in the world, but it was obvious that
“the world abides in evil” and that its Christian covering — all the splendor of life, rite, and form
— could be brought to fulfillment only by complete withdrawal to some freedom beyond the
limits — to the search for a new heaven and a new earth, where the truth lives. In this era of state
“obligation,” fixed pattern of life, and static, oppressive “sacralness” there matured in Russia the
type of the wanderer, the tramp, the eternal searcher after the Spirit and the truth, free with the
freedom of complete abnegation, but achieving unity with nature and men. Behind the ceremoni-
al, self-satisfied Russia of daily life was born another, unpatterned, “light” Russia, illumined by
the vision of an ideal world, one that was loving, just, and joyous. This spiritual perfectionism
did not rise up against the Church, and denied nothing in it, but on the contrary lived by the grace
received from it. There developed a dangerous habit of distinguishing the “objective” element in
the Church — the grace itself — from its bearers, the Church community. The Russian believed
in the necessity for the priest as the performer of sacraments, but he had ceased to expect from
him anything else — as for instance, instruction, leadership, or a moral example. What could be
expected of the priesthood, in view of the complete lack of schools and the priests‟ growing de-
pendence on their parish; their poverty, oppression, and crudeness? It is enough to read the rules
of the Council of the Hundred Chapters about the secular clergy to become convinced of their
decline in the Moscow period. The priest ceased to be the head, the father, the pastor of the
community, to become a performer of services. Living souls did not seek to slake their spiritual
thirst or to find spiritual leadership in the official hierarchy, but turned to elders, saints, and her-
mits. Indeed, the Church community disappeared from the thought of the Church itself. There
remained the sinful world; within it were sources of grace, certain centers contact with which
became a treasured dream. Spiritual life withdrew deeper and deeper into an underlying world; it
became a mysterious underground river that never dried up in Russia, but had less and less influ-
ence on the life of the state, of society, and (in the end) of the Church itself.
The Moscow period was not an organically unified era but marks a profound break, a cri-
sis, and a division in the history of Russian Orthodoxy.

The Seventeenth Century.
The seventeenth century, the last century of pre-Petrine Russia, must be interpreted in the
light of this crisis. It began with the time of troubles and ended with Peter. It is frequently con-
trasted with the following era as the “dark background for great transformations, a stagnant cen-
tury.” There is very little truth in the characterization. Certainly many were still living in the old
ways and customs; many felt an increased need to fix their whole lives in a sort of solemn ritual,
sanctified if not sacred. But it is precisely when their way of life is breaking down that men be-
gin to be upset by the indestructibility of their fathers‟ principles and traditions. So in the intensi-
ty of the seventeenth-century search for a definite pattern of life we sense rather a delayed self-
defense against the decay of the old pattern, a depressive “flight into ritual, rather than the im-

165
mediate integrity and strength of their way of life.”
63
In the seventeenth century the crisis in
Muscovite Orthodoxy was revealed and exposed, and Moscow‟s way became the dead end that
made Peter‟s breakthrough inevitable.
Two main themes defined the life of the Russian Church in the 1600‟s. These were its
encounter with the West by way of Kievan Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and the schism of the
Old Believers, on the other. Both were of immense historical significance.

Encounter with the West.
The first theme brings us back to the Kievan metropolitanate, which in the fourteenth
century had remained outside the borders of Muscovite Orthodoxy, just as the Russian lands be-
gan to be gathered around Moscow. This division of the Russian Church into two metropolita-
nates may be explained in the first place by the rivalry between Moscow and Lithuania for a cen-
tral position in pulling the state together. In the fourteenth century Lithuania was in fact a Rus-
sian land and had claims as good as Moscow‟s to draw together the appanages. Hence the Lithu-
anian princes strove to acquire their own metropolitan, who would be independent of Moscow,
and by the fifteenth century they were successful. Even earlier, through the marriage of Yagailo
to Jadwiga of Poland in 1386, the Lithuanian kingdom was at first in personal union with Poland,
and later, after the last upsurge of Lithuanian independence under Vitovt (1398), in political un-
ion. After the middle of the fifteenth century the southwest metropolitanate was under the au-
thority of Roman Catholic kings and in direct contact, first with Catholicism and later with Prot-
estantism — that is, under the constant and very strong impact of alien forms of faith. That bitter
struggle cannot be described here; it is difficult to imagine anything more remote from genuine
unity of the Church than the campaigns — conducted by fire and sword, and with falsehood and
violence — that broke the spirit of the people and poisoned Christianity with hatred, all in the
name of unia, or unification! The union of Brest-Litovsk of 1596, which started a period of bloo-
dy persecution of Orthodoxy in Galicia, Lithuania, and Volynia, was a fitting end to the Byzan-
tine “unions,” with the sole distinction that the latter, thanks to the Turkish yoke, proved ephe-
meral whereas Brest-Litovsk poisoned the southwestern Slavs with hatred, divisions, and discord
for many centuries to come. Real persecutions of Orthodoxy have flared up here even in the
twentieth century.
But this history has another distinguishing mark. When almost all the Orthodox hierarchy
at the end of the sixteenth century seemed drawn to union (or rather, that is, to the rights and es-
tates of Polish Catholic bishops), the defense of Orthodoxy was undertaken in the first place by
Orthodox intellectuals, and secondly by the people of the Church themselves. Among the fol-
lowers of the influential Prince Ostrozhsky the first cultural center was formed, a college was
founded, and Orthodoxy defended by pen and book. Prince Kurbsky and the first Russian printer,
Ivan Fedorov, took refuge in Ostrog, and here the famous Ostrozhsky Bible was printed (1580-
81).
It is true that there was even sharper controversy here with Protestantism, which was
gaining strength in Poland and Lithuania, but the important thing was this conception of cultural
action in Orthodoxy — this first refuge of the “Greek-Slavic” tradition. In the face of terrible
pressure from the Jesuits sent to Poland to combat Protestantism, beginning in the 1580‟s, the
decisive factor was the opposition of the people, which found expression in brotherhoods. Pa-
triarch Joachim of Antioch, as he was passing through Russia in 1586, gave a charter to the most

63
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 58.

166
ancient brotherhood of Lvov; it could expose those opposed to the law of Christ, even excom-
municate them from the Church, and bring accusations even against bishops. After Lvov, bro-
therhoods arose in Vilno, Mogilev, Polotsk, and other cities. After the Council of Brest, the bro-
therhoods are the centers of resistance, using literary polemics and theological work. The bro-
therhoods organized schools, opened printing presses, and published books. In 1615 the famous
Kievan Brotherhood was founded, and the Brotherhood school was opened with the co-operation
of the Cossacks. Here in Kiev the main center of southwestern Orthodoxy was created.
While the first influences here were those of Byzantine tradition, this began to be more
and more mixed with Western influence. In struggling against the Latins, “by necessity they
turned to Western books. The new generation passed through entirely Western schools. The
Western, Latin example attracted them.”
64
The whole significance of this Kievan chapter in the
history of Orthodoxy lay in the fact that at this time Orthodox theology, in defending Orthodoxy
from aggressive unia, armed itself gradually with Western weapons, and Orthodox tradition
slowly shifted into Latin scholastic categories. The influence of the famous Kievan metropolitan,
Peter Mogila (1633-47), proved decisive. “He was a convinced Westernizer, a Westernizer by
tastes and habits.” In Kiev, to counterbalance the Slavic-Greek school of the Brotherhood, he
founded a completely Latin-Polish institute which soon engulfed that of the Brotherhood. Its
program was taken from Jesuit schools, and teachers who had graduated from Polish Jesuit col-
leges taught there. Here the question of Orthodoxy and Catholicism was transformed into a pure-
ly “jurisdictional” one; these Westernizers did not sense any difference in faith, or rather the pat-
tern of their own minds was by now wholly Latin. The main theological document of this
movement, the “Orthodox Confession,” usually ascribed to Mogila, was essentially Latin, and
was written in Latin. True, it rejected papal primacy, but its whole spirit was Latin. After Mogila,
Latin formulas and theories also began to penetrate Orthodox theology.
The injection into Russian Orthodoxy of this “Ukrainian baroque” — even before the
time of Peter the Great and his “window into Europe” — which made all Russian theology and
the whole Russian theological school dependent upon the West, was extraordinarily important in
the, history of Russian Orthodoxy. “The Western Russian monk, taught in the Latin or the Rus-
sian school, molded according to its example, was also the first who brought Western science to
Moscow.” The fathers of the new Russian school theology were two obvious Latinists, Simeon
of Polotsk and Paissy Ligarid. Jesuits appeared even in Moscow, and the dispute “over the time
of the transformation of the Holy Gifts,” which arose in the 1670‟s in Moscow was a typically
Western dispute by its theme alone. The first schools opened in Moscow followed the model of
those in Kiev, and when the time of Peter‟s reforms arrived, Russian theology would be already
“Westernized”! The Church did not oppose these influences. There was no free encounter of Or-
thodox tradition with the West; it was the conquest of unarmed Orthodoxy by Latinism.

Schism of the Old Believers.
The tragic history of the Old Believers bears witness to this crisis in tradition. The main
reason for it was the question of correcting the Church books, but behind that in the thinking of
the Church stood profounder questions and doubts. The isolation of the Moscow kingdom ended
with the time of troubles, and it stood at the crossroads or even at a parting of the ways. Meetings
with foreigners and the ties with Kiev, the East, and the West, which were increasingly frequent
and growing stronger, made direct and persistent demands on it to put its own ecclesiastical af-

64
Ibid., p. 43.

167
fairs in order, and aroused thought in Church circles, showing up the one-sidedness, inadequacy,
and indefensibility of Muscovite traditions.
Particularly acute, in connection with book printing, was the question of the service
books. There were too many variants in the manuscripts. Which copies should be used for print-
ing? The books of the Lithuanian press raised doubts about Orthodoxy, while the Russian ones
were defective and contradictory. Under Michael, the first Romanov to be elected (1613), the
disputes concerning the liturgical books several times reached the point of sharp rupture and
condemnations. One of these was the condemnation by the hierarchy in 1618 of the Abbot Dio-
nisi, of Trinity Monastery outside Moscow, for correcting the Book of Needs. The passion of
these disputes indicates the uneasiness and disturbance in the thinking of the Church. With the
accession to power of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich reform tendencies at court increased. This was
the period when Kievan influence was growing stronger in Moscow and Westerners were pour-
ing into Russia. We must particularly note the restoration of close bonds with the Orthodox East,
however; under Alexey Mikhailovich we see Eastern patriarchs several times in Moscow. An
active correspondence was conducted with them, and Russians in turn were sent to Greece.
However strange it may seem, these new bonds with the Greeks were one of the causes of new
troubles.
At last it was decided to correct the books according to the Greek models. This Greek
theme stemmed from the tsar and a circle of “zealots” close to him. But unfortunately in accept-
ing the Greek model those in Moscow did not specify or distinguish the quality of it, which was
often no less defective than the Russian, and the whole correction took place in the complete ab-
sence of cultural and theological perspectives. Too frequently the authorities were questionable
migrants from Greece seeking charity or profit in Moscow, who became teachers by chance. The
correction of the books was inspired not so much by a return to the spirit and truth of Orthodox
worship as by a drive for uniformity, and often by thoughtless Grecophilia.
The role of Patriarch Nikon was particularly crucial. He had “an almost morbid tendency
to remake and shift everything in the Greek way, as Peter later on had a passion to remake every-
thing in the German or Dutch way. They also shared this strange readiness to break with the past,
this unexpected lack of an established pattern of life, this premeditation and artificiality.”
65
Too
many anathemas and curses were immediately imposed, too much carried out by order and de-
cree. But what was worse, the Greek liturgical books printed in Venice were frequently sus-
pected by Russians to be Latinizing, like the Kievan editions of Peter Mogila. This does not
mean that the adherents of the “Old Belief” were right — Avvakum and those like him — but
they were indignant at this “wholesale denial of every old Russian ceremony and rite,” this gen-
eral leveling according to the dubious Kievans and the no less dubious Greeks, many of whom
had indeed studied in Rome and in order to do so had temporarily even accepted the Latin faith.
Hence the schism acquired unfortunate depth as a dispute over history, and especially over the
meaning of Russian Orthodoxy in it.
The anxiety of the schismatics may be expressed as follows: if all this consecrated and
holy past of Moscow, the third Rome, the last bulwark and hope of Orthodoxy, is guilty of so
many errors and distortions, as the innovators claim — does this not mean that history is coming
to an end and that the Antichrist is near? “It was not at all the „rite‟ but the „Antichrist‟ which
was the theme and secret of the schism . . . The whole significance and inspiration of the first
schismatic opposition did not lie in „blind‟ adherence to separate ritualistic details of daily life,

65
Ibid., p. 64.

168
but in this apocalyptic riddle.”
66
The schism was nothing but the price paid for Moscow‟s dream
of a consecrated pattern of life and of a complete incarnation in history and on earth of the last
Kingdom. At a deeper level, it was the price paid for the radical antihistoricism of Byzantine
theocracy, which had rejected Christianity as a way and a creative process, and had wanted to
stop history by “eternal repetition” of a single all-embracing mystery.
Both the perfectionism and the limitations of this theory are revealed here: the whole of
Orthodoxy was measured externally, according to rituals and words; the dispute never once went
beyond a stifling ritualistic casuistry. In a certain sense the schism did draw away from the
Church its best forces — those for whom the outward tenor and pattern of life were not self-
sufficient values, but only the outer form of the inner high ideal in their conception of Christiani-
ty and its adaptation to history. These people lived by an integral concept of the Christian world;
it was not their fault that this concept, both in later Byzantium and especially in Moscow, was
cut off from its vital sources — from the creative inspiration of the early Church, which had nar-
rowed down to the Typicon and the Domostroi.
But their opponents did not use tradition or truth to nourish their reform. The new books
were better than the old, more correct, more sensible; but the hierarchy, which accepted the
reform so easily, without reaching back to the sources of the faith and teaching of the Church,
now too easily accepted other reforms so long as they came from the authorities and were made
“by the will of His Majesty.” The schismatics were not so opposed to the Church as they were to
the empire; but in the name of that other theory of empire, which — no matter how trivial it was
made or narrowed down — saw and wanted to see itself as the Kingdom serving Christ. Their
opponents were almost unaware of this purpose: the metamorphosis of Christian theocracy into
the ideal of the Kingdom.
Thus in the seventeenth century relations between Church and empire again became
strained. From the patriotic services of Patriarch Germogen and the Trinity Monastery of St. Ser-
gei in the time of troubles, through the peculiar “papocaesarism” of Patriarch Philaret, we come
to Nikon and the schism. One feels that a transformation of the state has started, that its self-
awareness has begun to change. Even the “Most Pacific” Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, offering re-
pentance in the name of the empire before the relics of St. Philip, was essentially already remote
in psychology from the Byzantine and Old Russian theocratic self-conception. The atmosphere
of Western absolutism was more and more obviously coming into Moscow. Nikon‟s break with
the tsar in a certain sense repeated in Russia the Western dispute over relations between empire
and priesthood; it was first of all a dispute over authority. But perhaps the schism made inevita-
ble the triumph of state absolutism under Peter the Great.

Reforms of Peter the Great.
The dispute over the significance and the evaluation of the Petrine reforms may be called
the basic dispute in Russian Orthodoxy. It is a sharp and painful theme in the thinking of the
Russian Church. True enough, no one will defend the spirit of Peter‟s ecclesiastical reforms —
the synodal structure of the Russian Church, the procurator, and the de facto transformation of
the Church into the “Department of the Orthodox Confession.”
67
But there remains a far-
reaching question, frequently concealed behind the others, about the general meaning of the syn-
odal period in the history of Orthodoxy. It can be answered within the framework of this book

66
Ibid., p. 67.
67
Official name given to the Church in imperial terminology.

169
only if reduced to an inevitably simplified form. The time has not yet come for a scholarly an-
swer, and the answer in terms of life can be given by the future alone.
Hardly anyone will argue against the proposition that Peter‟s reform was first of all a
sharp break in a theocratic tradition, a deliberate passage along many lines toward a Western sys-
tem of thinking. It represented the reign of Western state absolutism in Russia. Usually Peter and
his successors and the whole Petersburg period are accused of depriving the Church of its free-
dom and independence. But the Church had not been free, in the modern sense of the term, since
the time of Constantine the Great — neither in Byzantium nor in Moscow. Yet without being
free, it was still distinct from the state and had not been dependent on it for its very existence,
structure, and life. However far the departures from “symphony,” they were always departures
and sooner or later recognized as such — as, for example, when the state itself venerated its own
victims. This occurred because the state recognized a law higher than itself, Christian truth, of
which the Church was the preserver. Western absolutism, born out of struggle against the
Church, denied that it had any right to be the conscience of the state and squeezed it within the
narrow framework of “ministering to spiritual needs,” which the state itself defined, as it defined
how they should be ministered to.
In its caretaking inspiration the “police state” inevitably turned against the Church. The
state not only is its guardian; it takes its own tasks from the Church, takes them away and under-
takes them itself. It assumes responsibility for the indivisible task of caring for the religious and
spiritual well-being of the people. If it subsequently again entrusts this concern to the clergy, it
does so by governmental delegation of power, and only within the limits of this delegation of
power to the Church is it alloted its place in the structure of the life of the people and the state,
and only to the extent and with the motivation of its usefulness and need to the State.
68

The “Synodal Period.”
Canonically the synod was recognized by the Eastern patriarchs, and the sacramental and
hierarchical structure of the Church was not harmed. Therefore the abruptness of the reform did
not lie in its canonical aspects but in the psychology that produced it. Through the institution of
the synod the Church became a governmental department, and until 1901 its members in their
oath called the emperor “the high judge of this Sacred College,” and all its decisions were
adopted “by its authority, granted by His Imperial Majesty.” This way of thinking is best ex-
pressed in the Spiritual Rule of Bishop Theofan Prokopovich, the chief assistant of Peter in his
ecclesiastical reforms; he brought into Russia all the basic principles of the Protestant territorial
Church, its concept of the relations between Church and state, according to which the visible or
earthly Church was conceived as also a religious projection of the state itself.
This radical, fundamental falsehood of Peter‟s reforms was not recognized by the Russian
authorities and was not repudiated, in fact, until the Revolution of 1917. There was a basic ambi-
guity in the relations between Church and state which infected the thinking of both state and
Church alike. It must be emphasized that the Russian Church in essence and in good conscience
did not accept Peter‟s reform. For it the emperor remained God‟s Anointed, and it continued to
accept this anointment in the terms of Byzantine or Muscovite theocracy. Therefore state and
Church interpreted the imperial authority in different ways, proceeding from almost contradicto-
ry presuppositions. The Russian Church was now anointing Western absolutism with the Byzan-
tine anointment to the throne, meaning the consecration of the earthly emperor to serve as Chris-

68
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 83.

170
tian basileus. From this point of view, Byzantine anointing with oil is theocratically a limitation,
not the absolutizing of imperial authority. And for one day the splendid Western officer, by “di-
vine” right of blood and inheritance the unrestricted master of millions of people, seemed indeed
to be the Byzantine basileus or the Moscow tsar. In his sacred robes, with the Cross on his head,
he seemed again an icon of the sanctified Christian empire. The Church and the people always
regarded him as an icon, but beginning with Peter the state itself was not aware of it; on the con-
trary, it was constructed wholly on the principles of Western absolutism. This difference between
the relations of the state to the Church (the “Department of the Orthodox Confession”) and the
relations of the Church to the state (“God‟s Anointed”) composed the main falsehood and discre-
pancy of the synodal period.
In Byzantium and Moscow Church and state had spoken a single language and had lived
within the same dimensions of consciousness. Therefore, despite all the subordination of Church
to the state, the Church maintained an immense authority in the life of the state from top to bot-
tom. Now, due to the difference in language and the incompatibility of their outlooks, the Church
acquired a slightly anachronistic tinge as a remnant of antiquity, not only outwardly but psycho-
logically, from within. For a long time its theocratic ideology prevented it from simply becoming
aware of its captivity in an alien world; and from recognizing all the falseness of its subordina-
tion to an empire which was not Orthodox in any of its roots, or from wishing for freedom and
recognition of the already accomplished fact of the separation of the Church from the state.
There remained silent fright and obedience to the law.
The clergy in Russia after Peter‟s era became the “frightened class.” Frequently they
dropped down or were pushed back into the depths of society. At the higher levels an ambiguous
silence was maintained. The best were locked within themselves and withdrew “into the inward
desert of the heart.” This frightened constraint of the clergy was one of the most undeniable re-
sults of Peter‟s reform. In the future the thinking of the Russian Church developed under this
dual restraint, administrative decree and inward fright.
69

Culture Under Peter the Great.
Yet under this state pressure, which had become utterly alien, the life of the Church did
not perish, and the synodal period, despite the very widespread conviction to the contrary, can in
no way be considered a time of decay or impoverishment of spiritual forces, or any sort of dege-
neration. The great and profound culture that was gradually created within the Church at this
time, unlike the Moscow period, is too frequently forgotten. True, it was started by a powerful
injection of Western influences and traditions. Peter himself, in his ecclesiastical transforma-
tions, had relied on the Kievans and had used them to replace the native Russian bishops. There-
fore the Russian divinity school (twenty-six seminaries were opened before 1750) was a Latin
school in language and in the spirit of its teaching. There is no doubt that “this transferral of the
Latin school onto Russian soil marked a rupture in the way of thinking of the Church, a dichoto-
my between theological „learning‟ and ecclesiastical experience; people still prayed in Slavic but
theologized in Latin.”
70
In the ecclesiastical and theological experience of the Russian Church,
this theological Westernizing of course played a fateful role which must not be underestimated.
Yet still, after centuries of Muscovite darkness, after the break with all scholarly and cultural tra-
ditions, mental discipline returned for the first time to the Church, and education and the inspira-

69
Ibid., p. 89.
70
Ibid., p. 101.

171
tion of creative work returned as well. Father George Florovsky has made a whole study of the
development of Russian theology; there is no space here to list even its major names.
Even though it came through the West, from Latin or German books, the great forgotten
tradition of thought, that of disinterested search for truth and ascetic service to it, were revived
again in Orthodoxy. In cultural circles our divinity schools have had a bad reputation; they have
been judged by Sketches of a Seminary by Pomialovsky, and such characters as Barnabas Prepo-
tensky or Rakitin. “Seminarism” became a term of scorn.
71
Yet in the obscurantism engulfing
them on all sides, the lowering of all standards and the coarsening of all traditions, this divinity
school, poor and downtrodden, despised and frequently helpless, comes to life as one of the glo-
rious bulwarks of Russian culture, and in the history of Orthodoxy its contributions are great.
The academic level and freedom of the professors of the Russian graduate seminaries — „„holy
academies,” as they were called by one Russian religious writer — were in no respect inferior to
Western European or Russian secular scholars, and frequently surpassed them. This theology
remained “scholastic”; its contributions were more in history and philosophy, or rather in prepar-
ing for a genuine theological renaissance. But it produced the Metropolitans Philaret and Nesme-
lov.
72
At the beginning of the twentieth century Russian theology was on the threshold of a ge-
nuine cultural flowering, a renaissance in all strength of the universal tradition of Orthodoxy. But
the Revolution came.
There was also an obvious rebirth of monasticism in Russia and a new, unforgettable re-
surgence of holiness in the synodal period. The eighteenth century was illumined by St. Tihon of
Zadonsk (1724-82), and the early nineteenth century by the wonderful light of St. Serafim of Sa-
rov, the elders of Optina Pustyn, and many other centers of spiritual life.
73
Here the ancient but
eternally youthful traditions of Orthodoxy were very clearly restored, and the full force of the
never-silent summons to “do honor to the heavenly calling” appeared once more. Behind the
complex and tragic official history of Petersburg Russia we glimpse again and again another his-
tory which never ceased to develop, that of the slow summoning of the spirit, the “acquisition of
grace,” the enlightenment of the blackened human image by the ineffable glory of the First Mod-
el. One cannot reduce the history of Russia to the history of her culture, political struggle, social
movements, or economic development, and forget this dimension of holiness, which drew so
many to it (and not only the common people by any means) — this gradual but inspiring inward
liberation of Orthodoxy from its bureaucratic destiny. To ignore this process would mean to
overlook something most essential in the spiritual progress of Russia and of all Orthodoxy, in
that crucial nineteenth century when the curtain was already rising on the “accomplishments” of
the twentieth.

Bridge and Unifier.
One must indeed admit that the history of Russia has been a tragedy, and it is this tragedy
that makes it so important in the history of Orthodoxy. When we think of the great Russian lite-
rature, we have to acknowledge that it was not only inevitable for Peter to turn to the West, but

71
Prepotensky was a seminarian who became an atheist in Leskov‟s Cathedral People; Rakitin,
the seminarian in Dostoevski‟s Brothers Karamzov.
72
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow (1782-1867) was one of the greatest Russian hierarchs and
theologians; V.I. Nesmelow (1863-1918) was professor at Kazan Theological Academy and au-
thor of the remarkable Science of Man (1903).
73
Cf. G. Fedotov, Treasury of Russian Spirituality (New York, 1948).

172
essential. Only in free encounter with the world could Russia become herself, grow to her full
height, and find her true calling, which was to overcome the terrible gulf between East and West,
which had been the chief sin of the Christian world since the Middle Ages. There was much dis-
pute about East and West in Russia, but Russia herself revealed a truth that had dropped out of
sight in Europe long before: that this contrast was in itself false and even sinful, for it was a
falsehood against the original unity of the Christian world, whose spiritual history goes back to
the miracle of Pentecost. All the best that Russia has created is the result of the inward reconcili-
ation of “Eastern” and “Western,” of all that was true and immortal that sprouted from Byzantine
seed, but could grow only by identifying itself once more with the general history of Christian
humanity.
“Europe is a mother to us, as is Russia, she is our second mother; we have taken much
from her and shall do so again, and we do not wish to be ungrateful to her.” No Westernizer said
this; it is beyond Westernizers, as it is beyond Slavophiles. Dostoevsky wrote it at the height of
his wisdom, on the threshold of death . . . His last hope was Messianism, but a Messianism
which was essentially European, which developed out of his perception of Russia as a sort of
better Europe, which was called upon to save and renew Europe. This hope may have been un-
justified, but those who maintained such a faith were not turning their “faces toward the East,”
they were turning to Europe, believing that the “Eastern,” meaning the Russian, light, or the light
of Europe renewed, would shine over Europe. They did not yet know that their prophecy, to the
extent that it was fulfilled, was fulfilled by them themselves.
74

Russian literature was born from the “Western injection” and began as an imitation of
Western literature; but it became a great world literature, and more than just a literature of mod-
ern Christian thinking, only when it ceased to be either Western or Eastern. The more clearly its
Christian root was revealed, the more it became simply Russian.
In some mysterious way, not yet thoroughly explored, Russia‟s primitive Christian Or-
thodox inspiration turned out to be the soul, the conscience, the profundity of this upper-class
Western culture. More than that, what Eastern Orthodoxy alone revealed, sensed, and perceived
in the world, in man, and in life became the source of new depths and discoveries in Russian lite-
rature. The man of whom this literature speaks and to whom it is addressed is the Christian man,
not in the sense of moral perfection but in the sense of the depth and illumination used to perce-
ive and describe him. Thus G. P. Fedotov calls The Captains Daughter by the lucid, classical
Pushkin the most Christian of all literary works. It was not by chance that for Russians them-
selves, in the nineteenth century, literature gradually came more than mere literature. In no other
country did the writer pay so frequently for his art by his blood and his life as in Russia.
Russian thought, also, was born from Western roots. It has long been known that in Rus-
sia not only the Westernizers but the Slavophiles, too, were the fruit of German idealism, of He-
gel and Schelling. But here again it was transformed into something more than merely imitative
philosophy by what came out of the depths of Orthodox memory, and the Western patterns were
suddenly filled with new content and new force. From Khomiakov, whom Samarin called “a
teacher of the Church,” to the Russian philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century, its
themes more and more clearly emerged as the universal truth of Orthodoxy — not of Byzantin-
ism, not of the East, but of an all-embracing, final Christian synthesis. These were not only men-
tal patterns; behind them the light of spiritual resurgence in the Church itself glows more and

173
more brightly — the return within the Church‟s own consciousness to the vital and eternal
sources of its faith.

Tragic Halt.
Thus, in Russia, Orthodoxy began to emerge from its Eastern isolation and to regain the
universal spirit without which it is not Orthodoxy, not an eternal answer to the longings, hopes,
and strivings of the world, but a withdrawal from this world into comfortable, intimate little dead
ends.
The tragedy is that this development in Russia was not the only one, but in fact, century
by century and year by year, there grew as well that terrible divarication which ended in the tri-
umph of Bolshevism. Again there have been many disputes over the Western or the Eastern
sources of this evil. Any oversimplification is inappropriate here. Never has the connectedness of
everything in history, the interweaving of freedom and determination, of good and evil, seemed
so clearly revealed as in the growth of the Russian catastrophe. The final rootedness of every-
thing lies in those same depths in which the spiritual choice is made. Simultaneously with the
growth of light in Russia there was a growth of darkness as well, and it is a terrible warning,
judgment, and reminder that the darkness proved the stronger.
On the historic road of Orthodoxy the Russian chapter is now of course the final one, the
last. Here Orthodoxy once more became history and was recognized as a way and a task, a crea-
tive inspiration for life. The way seems cut off, and in persecution and the blood of martyrs a
new chapter in the history of the Orthodox Church is beginning. The past as well must be judged
by them; they bear witness to the fact that what is eternally living and victorious over “the world
abiding in evil” can only be rooted in whole-hearted faithfulness to Christ.
As we end this brief outline of the historic way of Orthodoxy, I do not intend to draw
conclusions. The way is not finished; history goes on, and while it continues there can be no final
conclusion for the Christian. I would like to add only that too many people regard the history of
the Church as a temptation and avoid it for fear of “disillusionment.” I am afraid that in this
book, too, they have found both temptations and disillusionment. In the record of Orthodoxy, as
in the story of Christianity in general, there is no lack of defects and human sins. I have not
wished to hide them, for I believe that the whole strength of Orthodoxy lies in the truth; moreo-
ver, “discerning the spirits” of the past is a condition for any real action within the Church in the
present.
In modern Church thinking, the past frequently oppresses and enchains rather than being
creatively transformed into faithfulness to genuine tradition. This reveals an inability to evaluate
the past, to distinguish the truth in it from mere bygone history and custom. Unless a distinction
is made, true tradition becomes confused with all sorts of traditions that should themselves be
judged in the light of the eternal truth of the Church. What is partial, one-sided, and even dis-
torted is frequently proclaimed as the essence of Orthodoxy. And there is a sin of absolutizing
the past which inevitably leads to the reverse extreme — to “modernism,” meaning essentially
rejection of the past and acceptance of “modernity,” “science,” or “needs of the current moment”
as the sole criterion.
But just as the maintenance of Orthodox externals alone is incapable of concealing the
profound crisis in modern Orthodoxy, so modernism is incapable of healing it. The only way out
always lies in a return to the truth of the Church itself, and through it to a mastery of the past. In
it we find the eternal tradition of the Church, as well as innumerable betrayals of it. The true Or-
thodox way of thought has always been historical, has always included the past, but has never

174
been enslaved by it. Christ is “yesterday and today and forever the same,” and the strength of the
Church is not in the past, present, or future, but in Christ.

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